In a recent opinion piece published on ERR, Veiko Randlaine argued that the development of Estonia's drone sector requires a national strategy, strong research and development and a clearer legal framework. It's hard to disagree with those points, but the situation is far more nuanced — and a strategy document alone won't be enough to take the field to the next level.

The drone sector faces a number of challenges. Demand has skyrocketed and drones are expected to deliver increasingly complex functionality. The technological arms race has dramatically shortened the time it takes to bring products to market.

Despite the pressure of tight timelines, we must ensure that the products developed here are high-quality and that the procurement conditions for foreign products are technologically well-considered. We also need more engineers and software developers, along with reliable solutions in communications, navigation and automation. The list could go on indefinitely.

In my view, the solution in this kind of environment lies not in another visionary document, but in coordinated efforts to bring together the existing players.

The community must want to collaborate

Finland recently unveiled a so-called drone strategy that aims to address many of the same challenges. While not a national plan, it represented a unified vision developed by a cluster of companies within the sector.

There's a key lesson here for Estonia: developing a field doesn't always require a government-led white paper. A shared ambition articulated by the community, and amplified by the state, can be an even stronger foundation.

We're in an excellent starting position to launch such a platform. Estonia's drone sector already has capable and dedicated players who have done a lot of good work in the right direction. But these actors are each moving within their own well-defined lanes, often deliberately keeping to themselves. In places where there should be collaboration, we too often see rivalry — competition over ideas, talent and funding.

Many strong players

Metrosert's applied research center for drone technologies plays a key role in this value chain by offering research and development services, as well as laboratory and testing environments to evaluate drones' reliability, environmental tolerance, interoperability and resilience to interference. This ensures that Estonian companies don't need to outsource validation of their solutions to foreign service providers.

The Estonian Academy of Security Sciences' Remote Sensing R&D Center is the leading expert in internal security applications — surveillance, policing, border control and rescue operations involving drones. The center's goal is to ensure that Estonia has testing areas and technologies available to evaluate drone performance even in complex and disrupted conditions.

The primary mission of the Estonian Defense Forces and the Estonian Military Academy is, of course, national defense — a sector where demand is currently highest. Drones must be reliable, integratable with existing systems and capable of performing a wide range of tasks. This stakeholder is particularly interested in ensuring that Estonian companies can provide at least some strategic subsystems domestically, so that in a crisis, the country isn't left vulnerable to foreign supply chain limitations.

The Estonian Aviation Academy is also contributing to the sector's development, focusing on civil aviation, safety and airspace management. Its interest lies in ensuring that drone operations are smoothly integrated into the broader Estonian and European civil aviation framework.

And of course, the greatest asset of our drone community is our companies — the developers of drones, sensors, software solutions, communications systems and navigation technologies. Their interests are highly practical: fast access to test areas, flexible regulation and the assurance that their products can reach both domestic institutions and export markets.

How to bring the sides together?

All of these players have different interests — but they are entirely compatible. That is, if a secure framework were created in which all parties could share their capabilities and expertise. If we were to connect these "fragments" into a coherent whole, we could build a value chain that would accelerate the growth of Estonia's drone sector many times over compared to everyone working in isolation.

Still, we shouldn't expect this to emerge naturally from market inertia. For the community to truly function, the sector needs a coordinator and a collaborative platform that brings stakeholders together and helps implement shared goals.

This collaborative platform should serve four main functions.

First, it should map demand across different areas of public administration. Second, it should support development across the entire value chain to ensure we have the necessary competence and capacity to meet the needs of our primary end users — who, given the current security situation, are inevitably the Defense Forces and internal security agencies — even in times of crisis.

Third, the platform should focus on securing key competencies by enabling the training of engineers, software developers, analysts, operators and other specialists essential to the drone sector and by effectively connecting theory with hands-on practice. The fourth task would be to support business development through testing areas and laboratories capable of evaluating product functionality and resilience under real-world conditions, as well as developing standardized testing methodologies.

We can't ignore the issue of funding. When acting alone, our projects tend to remain small and vulnerable — easily cut off or left without resources. But as a unified community covering the full value chain, where everyone plays a clear role, it becomes much easier to justify continued funding and build trust among investors, the state and international program coordinators. In this way, the platform would also lay the foundation for a sustainable funding model.

In the near future, stakeholders in the drone sector must come together to shape a suitable collaborative platform. If the members of this community recognize the value of working together, the sector can take a significant step forward through coordinated, collective action.

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