Let us talk about warfare. While it is a very broad concept, which we all inevitably keep up with via the news, it is more complex than might seem to the average listener. It has changed a great deal, even looking just at events in Ukraine over the last few years. But the Estonian Defense Forces' main battle experience is from the Afghan and Iraq wars where we served as allies of the Americans or Brits. I would imagine you also saw battle the closest in Afghanistan?

Yes, I was there as head of the [Estonian] contingent, while I was not directly involved in battle activities. I was the staff commander attached to the British task force and rather got a top-down look at the operations. But I also joined the units in the field.

Looking back on those two wars based on recent experience – the war in Afghanistan, which you saw up close, and the Iraq war where a lot of Estonian soldiers fought – could we say there is little to nothing for us to learn from them on the backdrop of the Ukraine war?

I categorically disagree. Let us take a step back in history. The battlefield, as we're seeing it in Ukraine, and for which the major powers are preparing – because the agenda of a conflict between major powers has not gone anywhere and looking at American doctrine documents, those of Russia, China or India, it is still on the agenda for everyone and something they feel they must be on top of – this kind of war took shape by 1916. The battlefield for which we are preparing today is largely the result of 1916.

What has changed? The internal combustion engine has been perfected, we have nuclear weapons and we've learned to make better use of electronics. In other words, while we're seeing new tools, the proportion of space, time and how we make use of those tools has not changed too much since 1916.

Allow me to interrupt you here. In 1916, there were major battles with static front lines somewhere between France and Belgium.

Yes, and the biggest difference compared to earlier battles was that artillery was no longer engaging visible targets, it became possible to try and destroy or neutralize the enemy from a great distance.

We are seeing the continuation of that today. The debate where Ukraine wants to be allowed to fire deeper into Russia is part of the same tendency. We want something that we could use to exhaust the enemy's ability to wage war, without having to physically show up to do it.

Which is more or less precisely how the U.S. and Brits fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. While their personnel did stretch into tens or even hundreds of thousands, they tried to put pressure on the enemy from afar. I think a permanent front line never developed in Afghanistan.

Not to my knowledge. There were operations, but most resistance movements follow the Maoist doctrine of avoiding a large opposing force, pulling back and biding your time until the chance of a conventional operation presents itself. All these steps of Maoist revolutionary warfare were present there.

The first things cadets learn in any military school is that you need to take the initiative, you need to have a good plan. You need to locate the enemy, engage and destroy them and exploit the advantage.

Looking at the Russians' February 2022 operation, it was a textbook example of such an attempt. The way we teach it in military school, if we look at the start of whichever war – World War I, a perfect example. You've got the French promising to be in Berlin by Christmas and the Germans promising to reach Paris by the same time, with the British saying, we'll just see about that. We're still teaching these aspects, and what a war will be like will only become clear once it is underway.

The war in Ukraine is perhaps best mimicking the First World War's defensive battles near Paris and the 1943 battles of WWII where the front lines became quite static. Both sides have exhausted a part of their resources, have to stop somewhere and gain a foothold. Then it becomes about who who can first create the conditions for a breakthrough or wear down the enemy's forces to a point where they'll collapse.

Ukraine is holding on just fine today, and we can't see Russia having too much in the way of resources that could facilitate a major breakthrough with the potential of collapsing the Ukraine army. We see none of it.

Allow me to come back to the Afghanistan and Iraq experience. I had the chance of visiting Afghanistan in 2012, spend a week there, also looking at what the Estonian and British forces were doing, and the high-tech and weapons superiority that the allied troops had was frankly nothing short of staggering. An Estonian officer told me how they had reached an irrigation ditch with a strip of forest or bush behind it during a minor operation and were just in the process of deciding whether they should go through it or around it, when an American unit took up positions nearby and asked the Estonians what their plan was.

After the Estonian had laid out their intentions for the area, the American simply picked up a comms device and called in an A-10 close air support plane, which fired two missiles and reduced the little strip of woods to cinders. This saved the Estonians from the trouble of conducting a tricky mission in the area. The Americans could afford to fight like that in Afghanistan. We cannot afford it even now, but we'll come back to that later. However, Ukraine definitely cannot afford to fight like that.

The tools that were used there... We are talking about technologies from the 1970s and 80s, which were developed to fight the Warsaw Pact countries in Central Europe. So that is one side of it. But lacking a [visible] enemy leaves a military organization sloppy, you get used to being able to move around without meeting resistance.

In the end, no aerial unit has ever conquered a territory, just as no naval unit has. To be able to say that you control a territory, you need to have an infantryman there – still the strongest foreign policy argument in terms of claiming you own something.

The systems used by the U.S. and its NATO allies in the 1980s, meant for neutralizing Soviet shock troops and all consequent shocks – all of it existed. But because the enemy disappeared, much of these systems were allowed to atrophy.

Electronic warfare – the Americans had an entire system for unraveling Soviet air defenses, which were meant to support their land incursions. Electronic warfare using planes and terrestrial bases made up a major component of this system – which aircraft would attack which parts of the Soviet defense system unto its eventual collapse.

The Americans demonstrated in the 1991 Gulf War how an air defense system is unraveled, which caused Iraq to pretty much collapse after 100 days of ground operations, to give up and say the war is over.

Now, about Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe that the experience we gained was not so much about how we fight. The main thing we learned was how to use different tools you have at your disposal, how to use them to support land operations, because Estonia simply didn't have such tools at the time. Perhaps our biggest lesson was command, having companies independent enough for their commanders to understand how they were contributing to a larger task.

That these wars were against resistance movements and perhaps painted a misleading picture of how wars are fought is rather reflected in the forces that switched to professional armies in the 1990s and early 2000s, which happened as a result of political pressure. Most countries that used to have compulsory military service also had very strong limitations on using conscripts for operations. But because there was no war in Europe, what they needed were professionals who could be sent to peacekeeping missions. That changed the focus, shifting it to all of these smaller wars or fighting resistance movements.

Estonia's greatest strength was our historical experience and the realization that we are living next to a neighbor who has never forgotten it should own certain territories. I say that over those 33 years (since Estonia regained independence – ed.) we have never stopped preparing or training for a major conflict.

The war in Iraq was a brilliant example – and the Afghan war I believe – in that a few countries' troops did not have any restrictions. I believe the Americans had relatively few restrictions, as did the Brits, Estonians and perhaps also the Danes.

The Poles have also been relatively free traditionally.

Basically, Estonians were among only a handful of armed forces who had no restrictions and took part in every kind of operation, while the Germans spent most of their time sitting in their barracks.

Well, we had some restrictions. When the ISAF commander in Afghanistan asked us whether he could use us as ISAF reserves and move us out of Helmand, we realized we did have some limitations in that we had to stay there with the Brits.

While we're on the subject of historical comparisons, in terms of it taking just a few months for the U.S. and their allies, mainly the Brits, to force Iraq to surrender, they had a massive technological advantage. I looked up the sides' losses before the show, and it was something like 10,000 killed or wounded for Iraq versus just 140 casualties for the U.S. and U.K. It was not a clash of equals, nor what we are seeing today in Ukraine.

Yes, I agree. But I recommend reading Norman Schwarzkopf's memoirs on the Americans' calculations before they embarked on their ground campaign. They wanted to be absolutely sure, because the Iraqi military was one of the largest in the Middle East in 1990-1991, it had just come out of a conflict with Iran, and the Americans feared their experience.

The operation was handled mainly by the Americans, British and French who were going up against a classic Soviet-style military, with Schwarzkopf describing how to dismantle the system. In some ways, they were testing out what would have happened had the conflict heated up in Europe.

There was a major tank battle – I cannot recall its name – which culminated in the destruction of dozens of Soviet tanks, while only a single tank was damaged for the Americans. This also works to demonstrate the technological imbalance. Would a Soviet-NATO conflict somewhere near Berlin have ended the same way? I doubt it.

First of all, there is the resource gap, because the Americans really did prepare and went in with a large enough force to guarantee success. The conflict that would have exploded in Europe – we need to place it in historical context in terms of what they thought they knew about Soviet technology and what they really knew.

By the end of the Gulf War, it had come as a major shock to the Americans that a large part of the technology that they had been fearing proved to be a lot less capable.

But it may also have caused them to underestimate what Soviet technology could do in capable hands. We'll never know, because it didn't come to that.

Soviet technology and weapons were put to much better use, compared to Iraq, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, mostly by Egypt but also other Arab countries hostile toward Israel.

I believe that the Yom Kippur War is a good example of what happens when you manage to neutralize one of the enemy's domains. Looking at the structure of the war, Egypt's plan was to take ten meters of the East Bank and stay there. To simply make a political statement that we have taken something back. But they did manage to set up an air defense bubble along the Suess Canal, which took the Israeli Air Force – one of the strongest links in their maneuver scheme –  out of play, meaning that Israeli armored troops had to engage the enemy without air cover, which they did not want to do, and which ended up causing a lot of casualties. Tanks, tank crews and infantry.

Finally, if we look at Operation Gazelle, which was Ariel Sharon's unit attacking across the Suess Canal, they first went after the air defense batteries to open the skies to their air force again.

We've so far taken a look back at the history of warfare, but let us now come forward in time. I recently read an interesting overview in the Wall Street Journal on how the role and importance of tanks has changed in Ukraine. The main example there was how Ukraine took delivery of 30 U.S. Abrams tanks last summer, which is probably rightly considered the most modern MBT in the world. But they have hardly used the tanks after their initial experience with them where they lost five or six tanks during a counterattack on the southern front. The reason is that the nature of warfare is so different from the military planning of armed forces with experience from past wars.

Tanks are so helpless on modern battlefields saturated with drones and other high-tech systems as to be kept far away, rather held back for defensive purposes, or rolled out for a short period only and for special operations. Could we now say that lacking tanks is less of a deficiency for Estonia?

We have tanks – those of the Brits and the French. But let us come to that southern front counteroffensive from last summer. Many Western analysts and military experts have said that one thing they got wrong was expectations management. The Ukrainians needed to send a positive message to their people, meaning that neither the West nor the Ukrainians realized what it would take to effect a proper armored breakthrough in terms of unit count. That is one side of it, talking about last summer.

The tank remains one of the most impressive weapons systems on the battlefield, especially in formation with other tanks. Once that force is underway somewhere, it is very difficult to stop. The mass, inertia involved is just so powerful.

Returning to what I said before, the war has become static. Neither side has the power to create breakthroughs necessary for armored pushes. A part of the reason is that the skies are full of surveillance equipment. Not just drones, but also satellites, meaning that units are very difficult to hide. That said, we know that the Pskov-based 76th Division managed to hide themselves on the battlefield for a week so that no one knew where they were, using sound and light discipline and proper camouflage techniques.

It is not quite right to think that a drone can solve all your problems. You can still disappear on the battlefield using old-school military tricks and discipline.

Another thing about drones, watching drone videos on Facebook or X, is that no one tells you how many drones were needed for one to finally break through.

Western experts are saying that they did not believe the Russians so capable at electronic warfare in terms of its complexity and power. They can eliminate around 90 percent of drones. Only a very small part breaks through to cause damage. But they can give you the information that you need, in terms of artillery fire control, where the enemy is gathering, what they are doing etc.

We're trying to figure out, if we fast forward four or five years, whether these small drones will be a problem once we get our own electronic warfare capabilities up to scratch. We will find a way to collect information or make them fly.

But I do not yet agree that the drone business is changing the very nature of warfare. It is a new tool. We'll see how it'll develop, while we are also seeing very busy countermeasures development.

Could we say that Russia foresaw the extensive use of drones by its adversaries and managed to build new electronic warfare capability or are we dealing with a capability they've had since Soviet days?

It is based on Soviet technology from the 1990s, which is when the Russian armed forces were really struggling for funding.

We can see it clearly now that the Russians did a thorough analysis and decided where they would spend the little money they had in terms of research and development. They are very strong today at what we might call disruptive technologies, things that jam or interfere with other things. They have really contributed to that side.

For example, their anti-air missile fuels, engines are several steps ahead of most of the things the West has, largely because they invested heavily in those things. And the other thing is electronic warfare, when they realized in 1991 that GPS or satellites might be used to guide in missiles, and that it was something they needed to address. They realized they needed to do something to avoid losing control of a domain.

What we are seeing a lot of in the Ukraine war is heavy use of artillery. Not even in the late WWII context where you'd set up a thousand howitzers on a stretch of the front and pummel the enemy positions for three hours, but rather in terms of having daily artillery duels, relying on firepower 20-30 kilometers from the front. Both sides are relying heavily on it. It comes off as going back 70 or even 100 years.

That is precisely what I led with, how since 1916, you want to wear down enemy units where they are perhaps more vulnerable. Because units that reach the front are prepared, they are already in their trenches or gearing up for an attack, with all the resources they need. If you can hit units behind enemy lines and render them immobile, you've solved half of your tactical problem.

If you have a leaky faucet, you first go and turn off the water before replacing it. Once you have the new faucet installed, you go and turn the water back on again. It's like that – trying to solve the problem from a distance so you wouldn't have to solve it where it's soldier versus soldier.

Another surprising aspect, despite all the historical experience, is the number of casualties on both sides, also as concerns civilians. It is counted in hundreds or thousands on a daily basis, which in no way compares to Iraq, Afghanistan or the other Middle East wars for that matter. We are talking World War Two numbers.

All recent wars have shown that the lion's share of casualties are by indirect fire, whether we're talking about aerial munitions, howitzers or missiles. The statistics have not changed here. Some WWII estimates suggest up to 90 percent of battlefield losses were from indirect fire.

What perhaps sets the two sides, Russia versus the West, apart in this is that the latter clearly bet on efficiency. Precision munitions do not follow humanitarian considerations. They allow you to fire a single shell at a target to destroy that particular target. It frees you from having to destroy an area of 100 by 100 or 500 by 500 meters, which requires tons of munitions, wears out the barrels of your guns and poses other logistical problems.

The Ukrainians have learned that lesson very well. That is also why they are always saying they need modern long-range munitions. While Russia clearly has smart munitions and stuff like that, they are still largely relying on carpet artillery fire, which poses logistical problems of wear and tear as well as manufacturing. That said, their military industry seems to be off the ground now.

It is scary for smaller countries. If you have to fight like Finland fought the Soviet Union in the Winter War, you may be as skillful or your people as motivated as you like, if the other side can afford mass casualties while relying heavily on indirect fire, it becomes a math problem of when will you run out of people.

Yes, and that is among the main points the EDF commander has made when asking for more munitions.

One part of it is taking away the enemy's capabilities that will hurt our people. That is also why the defense chief is saying that if we fail to secure these resources, the war will reach Estonian soil and it will result in catastrophic losses.

The calculation is based largely on the extent to which we can neutralize the enemy's indirect fire capabilities, disrupt their command. And for close combat, which is something the EDF is good at and has the means for, to be the last resort.

One aspect of the Ukraine war is perhaps almost unprecedented in world history. We have a war between a nuclear power and a country that lacks nuclear weapons, whereas the latter has held out for over two years and managed to take considerable territory from the former without suffering a nuclear strike. Is there a lesson here or should we just see it as a historical or Russian peculiarity?

I really cannot comment in any other way than by asking that if you invade a side that poses no existential threat to your regime, why would you use a weapon with the potential of causing you a world of problems?

There are reasons why nuclear weapons have been used on just two occasions – Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Looking at the 1960s, 70s and 80s, it has been a deterrent between major powers for maintaining a certain balance of terror. I think that for the Russians, using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, which does not pose a threat to the regime, would be something they could no longer manage internationally.

Could it be a case of the Russian leadership doubting how effectively they could use nuclear weapons? The nuclear arms system relies on the very ballistic missiles Russia is actively using against Ukraine, and we've seen how effective Western air defense systems are at bringing them down. Could it factor in that a tactical nuclear missile being shot down could collapse Russia's nuclear deterrence?

It is one part of the math being done at Russian staff headquarters, as Ukrainian air defenses, courtesy of Western support, have proven more than capable. I believe it is another result of two decades of the war on terror, where Western air defense took a back seat because it simply wasn't needed. Now, the West is waking up again and rushing to catch up both in terms of technologies and tactics, and I believe the Ukrainians are demonstrating today how they can be used to create an effective air defense bubble.

Permit me another question about nuclear deterrence or the use of nuclear weapons. A week or so ago, a study was published and picked up by the world media. Its core claim was that the United States' ability to use conventional weapons, cruise missiles mostly, to destroy Russia's nuclear launch platforms is now near-perfect, meaning that the Americans could reliably and very quickly destroy almost all Russian nuclear launch devices and sites in Russia. This has not been part of the public debate previously. How realistic do you consider that assessment?

I really cannot say, honestly.

It would have an immense effect on warfare in our day and age.

It would indeed. If we look back in history again, that the Americans opted for aircraft or intercontinental ballistic missiles as a means of transporting nuclear weapons, while the Russians went primarily with missiles, was rooted in both sides' existing capabilities and how effective they were.

Looking at the map, Estonia and Israel share a geographical peculiarity in that should a hostile neighboring country decide to attack, there is no depth of territory to surrender on tactical grounds. You have the sea off to one side and the enemy on the other.

That is true. But the comparison is not fully accurate, as our neighbor has not made it an official policy to wipe us off the map as a people. Israel's survival strategy and will to live stem from what has been the official policy in the lands surrounding them since the 1940s.

It is true that we also look at how Israel based the way it fights on certain postulates and are playing with the same ideas in our military academy. The Six-Day War in 1967 was a masterful operation. But the reason it was done was that because Israel lacks strategic depth, the war needs to be taken to the enemy at once, whereas it needs to be a war of attrition where you rob the enemy of enough capabilities and resources to make it impossible for them to come back in a few years' time.

We know from history that as soon as the Six-Day War ended, planes and aircraft started flying from the Soviet Union to various parts of Egypt to rebuild that capacity. The result was that Israel was forced to fight again in 1973.

So it is true that we're also toying with the idea. But the question is whether you physically take to enemy territory or whether you can hit their capabilities deep inside their territory from a distance, as well as who takes the first step.

I believe we have certain advantages compared to Israel. First, our landscape and a relatively cramped theater of war in the northeast. Things are a little more dangerous south or southeast, not least courtesy of a better road network in the area. But Israel is completely open to all of its potential rivals from all sides.

Up until 1973, Israel sported highly synchronized ground and aerial maneuvers, plus naval activity to neutralize the enemy's corresponding capabilities. Since then, there has been a split in Israeli military theory. Many officers, mainly with an air forces background, believe that it is possible to win battles by only firing from a distance. The 2006 war with Hezbollah demonstrated that this is not strictly true, as Israel had to eventually send in ground troops to take out Hezbollah's line of fortifications. That is when they realized that both elements are necessary, and you can't just beat the enemy from afar. You need ground maneuvers to remove the enemy from a territory to stop them being a threat.

Today, Israel is fighting a very complicated urban war in Gaza, while Estonia has no such problems, thank God. Israel has always maintained a high defense spending, invested in its air force, which we virtually lack, as well as in tanks and maneuver capacity. They've at times spent over 10 percent of GDP on defense. All to avoid losing valuable human resources and territory. From this point of view, Estonia should have been doing the same thing since 1992. Yet, we first elbowed our way into NATO, and once we got in, without having a concrete defense plan to the best of my knowledge, we kind of just hoped that should the Russians get any crazy ideas, NATO would come and protect us. Hardly a far-sighted plan.

We have been building up our national defense using trial and error for the past 30 years. An interesting parallel that came up during a recent trip is that if we look at 1938-1939, we are precisely where the first republic was in its military thinking, in terms of how the state functioned and how to resist, back in 1938.

That sounds terrible if I'm honest.

No, not at all. The difference is we know that is where we are today, and we must build up our defenses post haste.

Our advantage is knowing that we're part of the world's strongest military alliance. We know that all of our neighbors, with the exception of Russia, are our friends. Our level of security is greater, we know that help will come and that we're capable of doing things ourselves.

By the way, one of the decisions made in the ten-year national defense plan in 2012-2013 was that looking at what our allies could contribute in the region, whether it is an infantry brigade, an air defense system or aircraft, it is clear that the things Italian, Spanish, German or French politicians would find difficult to explain to their people, such as a lot of soldiers dying, will fall to us. In other words, close quarters combat will fall to us, while we have now started moving in the direction of hitting the enemy deep. It is easier for us to ask allies for the capabilities our budget simply cannot facilitate.

And yet, there has been a sharp turn since the start of the Ukraine war. While the NATO defense plan for us used to be to hold out independently for ten days or whatever, the new plan, as I understand it, suggests we should be able to defeat the Russian forces in their own territory, where the units that would be attacking Estonia are based. It is a fundamental change.

Absolutely, but it is a change the Ukraine war brought for many NATO allies. We cannot just wait around to be hit with a sledgehammer and need to be able to do some things first.

It changes little in the end. Ultimately, the EDF has been tasked by the Estonian people with defending the country. That is what we are training for and practicing on a daily basis, whereas we are now getting new capabilities for more effective operations, including hitting the enemy deep in their territory and all the rest of it. While we can discuss former and recent defense plans, the fact remains that it will always be the EDF delivering or receiving the first blow.

Talking about long-range strike capabilities, it constitutes a lesson from the Ukraine war, at least for Estonia and NATO. I remember from conversations with foreign colleagues from just a few years ago that when I suggested Estonia would ask its allies to wipe Kaliningrad and Kronstadt off the map should Russia ever attack, they were shocked, horrified even, judging by the look in their eyes. I don't think that is the case today. That is why the EDF is asking the taxpayer for €1.6 billion.

Absolutely.

This would probably not only improve our deterrence but also help encourage foreign investors to come to Estonia.

Definitely. Our allies in Estonia, the Brits and the French – if around a decade ago, we were pondering whether they would be with us from the first moments of war or whether they would have to ask their capitals for permission in terms of which weapons they can use and where, the situation by today is that all the allied troops we have here are integrated into our military plans. We know the tools they'll be bringing and what their tasks would be. Our deep strike capability is fully a part of NATO plans today, and NATO tells us that we need to take care of certain targets, which is when they can come and take the next steps.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!