A degraded security situation, the Brexit referendum and the election of a US President at best indifferent to European security matters have led the Member States to search for new security and defence solutions and for new ways to demonstrate European cohesion.
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Since Russia’s entry into the conflict in Syria in September 2015, the top brass and defense ministry have devoted increasingly more attention to the procurement of high-precision weapons systems. The Russian military has used various types of conventional cruise missiles during its operations in Syria, which has provided ample opportunity to combat test these systems.
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This ICDS Policy Paper was conceived as part of the on-going effort by the Baltic states to give substance to the idea of closer trilateral collaboration in the defence-related research and technology (R&T) area. In May 2010, the ministers of defence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) concerning such collaboration, which is up for review in 2012. This LoI followed in the footsteps of a trilateral commitment of 2009 to establish a legal framework for R&T collaboration. The aim of the ICDS Policy Paper is to identify the areas of R&T in which collaboration between the Baltic states makes most sense, to determine the level of ambition they should aspire to and to propose a suitable ‘business model’ for such collaboration. It tries to take into account the experiences, current status, needs and future plans for R&T of each individual country, together with various contextual factors which may facilitate or, to the contrary, inhibit development of a collaborative R&T agenda. The paper was presented and its main findings as well as recommendations were discussed at the meeting of the national defence-related R&T coordinators of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which took place on 25 April 2012 in Vilnius, Lithuania.
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Today, the Estonian Defence Forces rely mostly on in-house solutions to repair and maintain defence equipment. However, the existing infrastructure and machinery cannot cater for their long-term needs, the more so as it will be difficult to recruit and retain qualified personnel in adequate numbers in the longer perspective.
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For Europe’s governments, reducing defence expenditure is an easy response to times of economic hardship. Few immediate effects are felt by the population – compared, for example, with cuts in education or welfare spending – and what effects there are tend to be local, rather than national.
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