Chinese drones still dominate in Estonian Defense Forces training
While security agencies have issued warnings on Chinese-made tech, the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF) have been using it, mainly due to its lower price.
Low-cost Western alternatives are not available in large quantities at present.
Debates have emerged in the U.S. over whether to ban the import of newer Chinese-made drones, primarily made by DJI, on national security grounds. As is the case in Estonia, civilian use on the other side of the Atlantic is dominated primarily by drones of Chinese origin.
Although a ban would also affect civilian users, the U.S. has been trying to restrict Chinese drones since 2017, following concerns about the military using them. This led to an order to halt their use by the military over cybersecurity concerns.
CNN reported that in that same year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security also warned that drones manufactured in China could transmit sensitive flight data to the manufacturer, located in the PRC. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce added the drone company to a blacklist due to links to human rights violations and the high-tech surveillance of Uyghurs.
Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service (Välisluureamet) has likewise warned in its annual report that Chinese tech is becoming an increasingly serious security threat to other Western countries, Estonia included. However, DJI drones are still stockpiled in significant quantities by the EDF, and also by the volunteer Defense League (Kaitseliit).
The two organizations, which work in close cooperation with each other, use the drones primarily for training conscripts in drone flying, quite a tricky operation.
The head of the Defense League's Cyber Defense Unit, Col. Andres Hairk, said that at present, about three-quarters of the drones used for training in the Defense League are of Chinese origin. These are mainly of a similar kind which can be purchased by civilians in electronics stores and similar.
"We call them 'flying video cameras'. We use them, for example, to film from above and later show combat units what their defensive positions looked like from above, or how well they carried out camouflage, whether they made the right choices of positions," explained Hairk.
Internet access disabled on Chinese drones
Unlike commercially available drones, however, the EDF and Defense League modify their drones.
Marek Mardo of the Estonian Center for Defense Investments (RKIK) said that the drones reach the sector via an Estonian intermediary, Meridein, which modifies them before handover. This means the Estonian state has no direct contracts with Chinese defense industry firms.
Meridein modifies both the software and the hardware to minimise security risks and ensure that the devices do not connect to the internet or transmit data, Mardo said.
"Anyone can do this themselves if they have bought the drone from a store — precisely so that whatever logs or images are on the drone do not end up on some other country's server," Hairk added.
Another measure to mitigate security risks is to fly only within Estonian airspace, and only in specially reserved zones. "You can never rule anything out one hundred percent. We minimize this security risk and continue to consult on these issues with both the State Information System Authority and the Foreign Intelligence Service," Mardo said.
At the end of the past year, the Information System Authority (RIA) said it has been sharing U.S. concerns regarding Chinese drones and that the risk is real. At the same time, RIA noted that this threat is not so much based on any existing public evidence that drones produced by these manufacturers have been used by the Chinese government for intelligence activities. Instead, in RIA's assessment, the risk stems from the structural and legal framework in which the devices operate.
"As of today, there is not a single confirmed report that this Chinese drone has sent any kind of information anywhere," said Hairk.
Chinese drones have potential to be used in military ops
While the EDF currently uses the drones in training, this does not necessarily rule out their use in a real-life defense scenario, head of the EDF's unmanned systems program Lt Col. Arbo Probal.
"I think that at a certain level of military operations, we could still even use them if needed. Without going into details, we have technical and organizational measures to mitigate all the risks known to us. We are talking both about information security and communications," he went on.
Meanwhile, Hairk said that for now the focus is primarily on training. "Which drones will be used to conduct military operations, we do not yet know today, because they have not yet been directly procured. There are a few batches that have come purely to support training, but what will be the main so-called weapon of war that the EDF will use during wartime — those procurements have not yet been carried out," he said.
Hairk: Threefold price difference between Chinese- and Western-made drones
While the consensus is that in an ideal world, Chinese-made drones would not be in use over Estonian training grounds, China has Western firms beaten on price and output.
"If you want decent equipment, then today there really isn't much of an alternative either to DJI or to another Chinese drone manufacturer, Autel. There are also European manufacturers, for example, Parrot from France, but their price in the same class comes out about three times higher. For example, [a] Parrot [drone] costs around €20,000, while an Autel or a DJI Mavic is around €7,000," Hairk noted.
This is even more relevant when replacements, due to wear and tear and other damage, are factored in.
Probal added that another advantage of Chinese drones is that, because they are so widely available, young people entering conscription have likely flown similar models before in a non-military setting, making them already familiar. "By their nature, they are cost-effective and technologically mature; they have been produced and used for a long time," he went on.
Even European-made drones may contain Chinese components
Mardo also pointed out another issue — Western origin does not always mean no input from China. Global supply chains are so intertwined, that even devices assembled in Europe often have parts coming from China or elsewhere in Asia.
"Even those European drones are largely assembled from Chinese components anyway. The motors, to a large extent, are certainly Chinese," he said.
Delivery speeds are also a key EDF metric. While Chinese drones can be obtained quickly and in large quantities, waiting times at Western factories can stretch into months.
The hope is that in the future the gap can be filled by Estonia's own defense industry companies, with Probal noting that local manufacturers are making strong progress – and the EDF is even using some locally-made drones in training.
He said that the share of Chinese drones will likely decline in the future, while alternatives produced in Western countries will enter the market.
"In fact, even our domestic drone manufacturers are capable of demonstrating quite decent production lines and quite a good ability to rapidly scale up production," Probal went on, though conceding the EDF and Defense League are still at the mercy of supply chains, supply chains which many other allied nations are also at the end of.
In the meantime, until such a time as Western and Estonian manufacturers are able to offer an affordable and reliable alternative to Chinese mass production, the "flying binoculars" used by Estonian conscripts will remain largely of Chinese origin.
"It's the same trend as in the electric car market — Chinese goods are coming in on a large scale and their share is on the rise," Hairk put it.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
