Estonia Joins Finnish-Led Development Effort for Common Ground Vehicle

Earlier this year, on 29 January 2020, Finland and Latvia signed a Technical Arrangement on launching a development programme for sustained army mobility enhancement.

Finland’s Minister of Defence Antti Kaikkonen and Latvia’s Minister of Defence Artis Pabriks signed the document for the participating nations. Today, also Estonia joins the programme as Permanent Secretary of the Estonian Ministry of Defence, Kristjan Prikk signed the document.

“It is important, that we continue defence cooperation also during these times of epidemic and crisis. We are very pleased that Estonia is now also part of this development programme”, says Jukka Juusti, Permanent Secretary of The Finnish Ministry of Defence.

The cooperation programme aims to develop a common armoured wheeled vehicle system.

In case this development leads to vehicle system procurement in the future, the resulting common system enhances mobility, cost-efficiency, interoperability and security of supply of the armies of the participating nations.

With the Letter of Intent signed in December 2019, Estonia together with Latvia and Finland has shown interests for acquiring armoured vehicles for their national armed forces.

Based on national and multinational tests and evaluations, the vehicle chassis platform chosen for the development in-progress is a Finnish-made Patria 6×6 armoured wheeled vehicle chassis platform that meets the set capability requirements.

Published by the Finnish Ministry of Defence on April 6, 2020.