In addition to its artillery units, Estonia also now has its own rocket forces. The rockets fired from the Saaremaa coast over the Baltic Sea reached their target — 15 kilometers away — in less than a minute.

"We didn't actually do much damage to the sea since these are training weapons and have no warheads," said Warrant Officer Margus Oras of the Artillery Battalion, adding that the maximum range is in fact many, many times greater.

"As for accuracy, I can say we're capable of hitting a bucket from a very long distance," he added.

Training on the HIMARS systems that arrived in Estonia this spring has taken months, and Lt. Col. Rauno Viitmann said artillery troops have successfully retrained as rocket personnel.

"I don't think it's all that complicated," Viitmann said. "If you've got the basics, it's just a matter of retraining ona  new weapons system, that's all."

Since the shots were precise with a top-tier weapon, the lieutenant colonel also gave the training exercise a solid score.

"Today's firing is historic," Viitmann said. "It was our own reservists who fired [the shots], and every issue and shaking hand that came up during that first shot — we handled all those situations ourselves."

Yup, they work! The Estonian Defence Forces @Kaitsevagi trained with their very own HIMARS for the first time today. pic.twitter.com/BNQIoMo2CZ

— MoD Estonia (@MoD_Estonia) July 11, 2025

This story was updated to add the gallery.

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