Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna (Eesti 200) has already recalled how Russian fighter jets entered Estonian airspace last year, after which we made it a major goal to turn NATO's air policing mission into air defense. That decision has now been made. Speaking in Ankara, Tsahkna said it is the most significant decision Estonia is bringing home from the summit. How do you assess it? How symbolic or important a win is it for Estonia in reality?

Since I don't know the full package of decisions made in Ankara, it's difficult for me to comment and I trust the judgment of the government ministers who are there. It is certainly an important decision for Estonia because it provides much-needed clarity on the procedures and chain of command governing how air defense operates in peacetime.

So what changes as a result of this decision? What's the difference between air policing and air defense?

We need to go back a bit into the history. When Estonia joined NATO in 2004, the alliance's air policing mission was initially based only at Šiauliai in Lithuania. After Russia invaded Crimea and then eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Enhanced Air Policing mission was added and operations also began from Ämari Air Base [in Estonia].

As various developments unfolded, especially over the past five years, NATO established several additional missions along its eastern flank, from Estonia to Bulgaria and the Black Sea.

To the average observer, it may seem as though the aircraft are simply flying, but the way different countries contributed to these missions and the command structures involved sometimes became blurred because there were so many of them. At one point, there was even talk of nearly a dozen separate missions. The question was: when an aircraft is in the air, which mission is it flying under and what exactly is it supposed to be doing?

What was needed was clarity — a single, permanent activity under one chain of command. That way, there is no ambiguity about which drone incident or airspace violation we are responding to several months from now.

Am I understanding this correctly? If we unpack what this decision actually means, is the main change that political approval will no longer be required to shoot down drones or other hostile aerial targets? Under the previous air policing arrangement, did pilots and local commanders only have the authority to visually identify and escort a hostile target, after which they had to call a minister before any further action could be taken?

I don't have enough information to confirm or refute that. I would assume the same, but I have to admit I don't know because all of this is so new. Whether the precise definition of that chain of command is something that will be made public is for the people currently working on it to decide.

Is that what we would ideally want this decision to mean? From your perspective as an outside observer, is that the ideal outcome?

I think that would be reasonable because I trust that our own military chain of command and our allies' pilots are sufficiently trained and prepared to make those decisions without causing unnecessary escalation.

Let me explain what I mean. During the incident involving the MiGs over Estonia about six months ago, some people on social media were a little too eager, asking why they weren't immediately shot down. At the time, I defended — and I still defend — the decision to shadow them. Allied aircraft flew alongside them and made it clear that they would not be able to do anything dangerous without an immediate military response. The incident was resolved peacefully.

I also believe that now, if there is no immediate military threat, the first response will not be to open fire — there is no point in doing so. But if these incidents become recurring and it is clear they are part of a deliberate effort to escalate tensions and provoke a response, then there should be a rapid and flexible way to react appropriately.

Creating clarity in the chain of command — who has the authority to make which decisions — across all NATO countries from Estonia to Bulgaria, from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, is an important and much-needed change.

Fighter jets and cruise missiles travel at very high speeds — well over 1,000 kilometers per hour. At those speeds, it takes only a matter of minutes to cross Estonian airspace. Has the system really worked in such a way that, while a cruise missile or fighter jet is flying over or approaching Estonia, someone would have to call a minister to get authorization to shoot down a drone? How has the system functioned up to now?

Let's not confuse peacetime with wartime. If a cruise missile is flying over NATO territory, then we are clearly already in a wartime situation. If that were to come as a surprise, it would mean our intelligence and early warning systems had missed something significant, which I don't believe would happen.

What we've been talking about here are airspace violations, whether accidental or deliberate acts of provocation. But if NATO were facing a large-scale military attack, we would be operating under an entirely different level of readiness. We wouldn't be talking about four aircraft — everything would have changed long before that point.

So am I right in understanding that, up to now, political approval has still been required to shoot down a single drone?

When it comes to a single drone, it's unfortunately a complicated question. We have to go through what may seem like an expensive and resource-intensive process because, as long as our airspace remains open to civilian aviation, we have to make sure we're not shooting down a hobby pilot flying a Cessna with his son on board. We have to identify the aircraft using multiple means; a radar track alone is not enough.

In peacetime, this cannot be a case of simply opening fire from the ground with a machine gun and shooting down an unidentified object. It just doesn't work that way.

You said that, from your perspective as an outside observer, you would like to see political decision-making removed from the process and replaced with a faster, more efficient chain of command. So who do you think should ultimately make the decision about what to do with, say, a drone flying over Lake Võrtsjärv?

I believe that responsibility will be delegated to a military officer who is on operational duty rather than someone waiting on the other end of a phone line. That person will have their eyes on the screen, direct communications with other observation posts and access to real-time information, so they won't have to make a decision based on a phone call alone.

That's my assumption. I don't think the details of the chain of command will be made public.

Another part of the decision made in Turkey is that Ämari Air Base's status is being upgraded. Until now, Ämari has served as a supporting base to the Baltic Air Policing mission based at Šiauliai. Under the new agreements, however, it will officially become a NATO operational air base. What is the practical difference and what will it change?

From the outside, probably not much. I expect the same level of activity that we've seen there over the past five years will continue.

It reminds me of 2014, when I was commander of the Estonian Air Force and Russia had just occupied Crimea. At a meeting of NATO air force chiefs, there were all kinds of ideas about launching one mission, adding another mission, expanding activities here and there. My comment was that we shouldn't start anything we couldn't sustain for years because our competition with Russia is not a sprint — it's a marathon.

If we react now by launching activities that we cannot maintain over the long term, scaling them back later will be seen by Russia as a sign of weakness. We're in a similar situation today. We can't overreact by deploying multiple squadrons to every base along NATO's eastern flank, only to realize a few months later that the alliance as a whole lacks the resources to sustain that posture for years and then gradually begin withdrawing them. That would be a mistake.

Instead, we should continue to implement the necessary deterrence measures in a calm and proportionate way.

So, in summary, the decisions made in Ankara are significant in that NATO's air policing mission is becoming air defense. But we may never actually learn what changes in practical terms or how much the chain of command has been streamlined. From the outside, these could end up looking like largely symbolic decisions.

I can't say what will be made public and what won't. Even without knowing those details, I'm fairly confident that the decision has provided greater clarity for the military personnel and air force officers who deal with these issues on a daily basis.

As for exactly what changes in the chain of command, yes, I believe those details will remain classified and will not be disclosed publicly.

But one thing is certain: if there really is a crisis in the air, the response will be faster and more effective for the people who have to deal with it, even if those of us on the outside don't notice much of a difference.

We will be better prepared. But I want to emphasize that tracking down a single stray drone in peacetime, with the airspace open to civilian traffic, is still a difficult task. From a military perspective, it would actually be easier if we were operating under wartime conditions, with the airspace closed and anything that moved could be engaged — that would be much simpler to handle.

In peacetime, however, dealing with a single unidentified drone once a month is a much greater challenge.

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