Defending Estonia. Now that many of us naive allies are waking up to how unacceptable letting Russia occupy land is, what do you guys is the optimal way for Estonia and allies to go about defense?

7 comments

1. On a side note: I grew up in Northern Norway, and remember being told that if Russia ever invaded, we could initially only slow them down, they would likely take my town after just a few days, then Norway and NATO would take it back later. Hopefully this plan is being reworked right now! :-O

2. Very defendable, a lot of swamps, lakes, rivers and forests. Very hard to manoeuvre with heavy equipment. The border is especially defendable, since most of it seperated by a river and lake.

   We have basically non existent air force and navy so we completely rely on our allies in that department.

   Getting into Nordic Defence Cooperation wouldn’t matter much to us, as we are part of NATO and already cooperate with Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. With all countries participating regularly in our excercises and three of them have also deployed troops here.

3. Another 10-year old here. Lake Peipus is good natural obstacle but that’s about it. Not letting Russian navy to enter our shores is quite important i suppose. Thanks to our small area and short landborder with Russia, our manpower is probably more than enough. If Latvia falls, then we would be in trouble. WW1 we managed against Russia, WW2 our leaders tried the diplomatical solution which didn’t work out. Now we are prepared on paper at least. Us investing in collective defence instead of investing in own air force is something that our leaders chose and count on.

4. I’m not a military strategist but Estonia has a wide shore and two major islands which are pretty impossible to defend, we do not have long and medium-range air defense capability. Although it’s a popular topic among politicians atm, not sure if it would optimal usage of resources for us. So we are vulnerable to missile attacks from all directions if under naval blockade, so we would need support with anti-ship missiles or other naval power to open sea. I’m fairly sure we have naval mines available for us even if not publicly talking about it , but it’s really double-edged sword , yes there is nobody coming in, but nobody ain’t gonna go out either.
   Mainland , typical trench defense is doable and to extent I’m confident it will be done, however I hope Estonian defense is mostly built around our size, unlike big countries we can observe troop movements on almost every square meter of our territory, all the cameras , sensors installed by civil projects would make it impossible to move anything bigger than dirt bike without knowledge (summer time)- which is a factor that probably bigger attacker does not think about, so attackers equipment would be a lot more vulnerable than they would expect. In general in case of attack, I’d really expect very asymmetrical warfare. Small units sabotaging supply lines, ambushing using forests and other local terrain properties in their favor, lots of herding of enemy units, mining roads , forcing the enemy to chokepoints . Other thing going for us is the fact we have a conscript army available so a large part of the male population knows how to use rifle and basic unit movements and tactics. I personally believe that Baltics could be defended by developing mobile advanced surveillance systems to hinder enemies mobility , modern wars are about logistics and mobility , we could really inflict damage there fighting smart.

5. In a war scenario, what we need, #1, is NATO allies reacting straight away and establishing air superiority over Estonia and the areas in Russia that the enemy could use for artillery fire. Once that’s done, we have the edge. Failing that, we’re fucked.

6. AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters and F-22 Raptor jets + Relentless suppression of Russian air defense.

7. The Red Line podcast has a great episode on the Baltics: https://youtu.be/Le2Yyp4deAo

   The Baltics are basically like northern Ukraine meaning that despite the flat terrain, the Russians are quite vulnerable with the sparse roads through forest being bottlenecks, where Russians are prime targets for Javelins, and additionally the Baltic countries or one of them is specialised within Nato to be expert sappers, meaning their specialty is to deny the Russians easy access through trenches, mines and controlled demolition.

   An important factor is the air side as also seen with Ukraine, and the Nato has basically guaranteed superiority as long as it doesn’t fuck up. Biggest problem for Nato air side discussed in the episode was the problem of Kaliningrad air defences and how it really depends on whether Swedish air space is open for Nato to flank Kaliningrad from the north, but basically that can be said to not be a problem anymore with Swedes seeking to join Nato.