While the mandarins of Brussels drone on about “strategic autonomy” and the Westminster establishment obsesses over net zero targets, Estonia, a tiny nation on NATO’s front line, is getting on with the real business of defending the West.
Estonia — population 1.3 million, no delusions of grandeur — has just authorised the creation of a state-owned company to build a new RDX explosives plant. Hexest AS will deliver the chemical muscle needed for the 155mm artillery shells that Ukraine burns through by the tens of thousands – and that Europe, scandalously, still cannot produce fast enough.
This is not just a box-ticking exercise. It is not another “taskforce” destined to wither under the weight of committees and consultants. It is action – real, serious, grown-up action.
“There is a shortage of explosives production capacity in Europe,” admitted Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur this week. “Building new capacity is essential.” A statement so simple, so obvious, that it seems to elude many Western leaders still fumbling about in a world that terrifies them but which they refuse to fully face.
Contrast Tallinn’s approach to the agonised soul-searching and virtue-signalling that passes for strategic planning in Paris, Berlin or even London.
Since Russia’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, the so-called great powers of Europe have talked a good game about deterrence. They have summoned press conferences and held solemn candlelit vigils. But factories? Guns? Explosives? That might require getting their hands dirty – and, Heaven forbid, upsetting the budgets for climate conferences and diversity seminars.
Meanwhile, the serious countries — Poland, Lithuania, Estonia — are arming themselves to the teeth.
Poland is investing nearly £800 million in new ammunition plants. Lithuania is working with Rheinmetall to build a 155mm shell factory that will open in 2026.
Estonia, for its part, is wasting no time: not only is it launching Hexest AS and a new explosives plant at Ämari, but it is creating a full-blown Defence Industrial Park to welcome any weapons manufacturer willing to build and produce with minimal red tape.
It is not simply about national pride. Tallinn understands something Brussels bureaucrats and many in Whitehall still refuse to grasp: security is production. No supply chains, no ammunition. No ammunition, no army. No army, no defence. No defence — and you are simply a line on someone else’s map.
The urgency could not be clearer. Earlier this year, Estonia took delivery of its first batch of Caesar self-propelled howitzers – part of a push to create a new artillery battalion capable of actually fighting a modern war. Not parade-ground drills, but lethal, credible firepower.
Britain should take note. The country needs more than clever procurement strategies and glossy MoD pamphlets. It needs shell factories and ammunition plants. An industrial base that can outlast a major conflict — not some forlorn hope that Washington will always ride to the rescue, or that the EU’s paper-tiger armies will finally roar – that last one we can certainly forget about!
Estonia — a country that was occupied, brutalised and nearly erased by the last empire that rolled westward — has learned history’s lessons the hard way. Its government knows the truth: peace is paid for in powder and steel, not press releases.
The rest of Europe – including the UK – would do well to follow Estonia’s lead. Because if we don’t, we may find ourselves learning the same lessons — but at a far greater cost.
Main Image: By Andrii Nikolaienko – Pexels.com, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70561208
