Early on Sunday morning, Estonia's Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) monitored a drone flying close to the eastern border, which eventually crashed in Russian territory. It is not known if the drone was connected to Ukraine's attack on Ust-Luga port, which was taking place at the same time, or the Russians.

Drones flying from Belarus have breached Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish airspace in recent months, but Estonia has not experienced a similar situation.

Baltic airspace is protected by NATO's Air Policing mission and allied jets stationed in Estonia and Lithuania would have responded to the incident.

On Monday, Karu outlined what this could have looked like.

"Fighter jets take off immediately when an unidentified object enters the airspace of the Republic of Estonia. We go and identify it. But when and where force is used is another matter, and there are so many different scenarios for how that could unfold. But the procedures are in place, and we act," he told ERR.

ERR asked the colonel to explain how the Defense Forces (EDF) counter drones and how well protected Ämari Air Base is against them.

"As we have seen from the war in Ukraine, drones can target absolutely anything that happens to be in their path. Naturally, an air base and various command posts are target number one. And there are various tools that can be used against drones, from electronic means to missiles launched by fighter jets and air defense systems. There are different solutions for dealing with drones," Karu said.

Minister of Interior Igor Taro (Eesti 200) said the PPA monitored the situation and then relayed the information to the EDF. Karu said cooperation is good.

"We always inform each other in our respective formats about what we see. And if they are the first to spot an unidentified object flying at low altitude, or if we see it first, we notify them. I do not think there are any bottlenecks here. Our cooperation with Estonia's security agencies is very good. This cooperation and reporting went very smoothly," the colonel said.

However, Taro believes improvements could be made in the division of responsibilities.

"Currently, the situation is such that up to a certain altitude from the ground — when we are talking about low-flying objects — it is a matter of internal security. And everything above that is the domain of the EDF. This is definitely a point for discussion," he said.

"We need to talk about how effective such a division is. In some other areas, we have already consolidated responsibilities to have things handled in one place or jointly monitored and secured. This incident clearly highlights how important that activity is. We will discuss this together with the minister of defense in the coming days," the minister continued.

Minister: Fighter jets should not respond to every object

In the longer term, Taro said, more effective ways must be found to increase drone defense capabilities.

"The particularity of drone warfare is that relatively cheap tools can be used to overload air defense systems, which means we should also be prepared for the fact that maybe not every target potentially flying toward Estonia warrants scrambling fighter jets each time. That is simply too expensive and costly. We need to find ways to monitor the entire situation and counter possible objects more effectively," he said.

"At the moment, we have some capabilities. But if we look at the development of technology, the dynamic nature of the challenges, and what's happening on the Russian side, then we should be ready to act much more effectively in the future and respond more efficiently to such threats and risks," the minister added.

Taro referred to the construction of the so-called drone wall, which he said would cost around €200 million over the next four years.

"If I may comment in very general terms, the issue is that our neighboring country Russia is waging an aggressive war of conquest against another neighbor, Ukraine. And as long as that continues, we must always take into account that military activity is also taking place on Russian territory, and that territory is in direct contact with our country. Therefore, the risks are very high," he told ERR.

Sunday's drone crashed into the lake six kilometers from the Estonian-Russian border and broke into several pieces, the PPA's Ivan Posledov said.

Ukraine attacked key infrastructure sites in Russia's Leningrad Oblast on Saturday night and Sunday morning. The Ust-Luga port oil terminal was targeted because it helps fund Moscow's war, Ukraine's defense forces said.

--

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