Showcase: Inside Estonian defence tech

Milrem Robotics grew out of SEBE, a bus company on the Tallinn–Tartu route. When SEBE modernised its fleet, the repair workshops had less work. Rather than close them, the founders won a Ministry of Defence contract to maintain PASI XA armoured vehicles, and from there prototyped an unmanned ground vehicle in 2014. They unveiled THeMIS at a London defence show in 2015.

Today 19 countries operate the platform. In October 2025, the Netherlands ordered 150 additional units for Ukraine, the largest THeMIS order to date, to be assembled with Dutch partner VDL Defentec. A new Tallinn factory can produce 500 units a year, 5 times previous capacity. Milrem also unveiled the Havoc 8x8, a 12-tonne hybrid-electric robotic combat vehicle that reaches 110 km/h. EDGE Group of the UAE holds a majority stake, the largest foreign investment in Estonian defence.

Around the anchor, smaller companies appeared. ASAX Innovation in Viljandi builds medevac UGVs tested in real operations. GoCraft runs Estonia's first privately owned military vehicle facility, converting 37 Norwegian-surplus CV90 armoured vehicles under a EUR 29 million contract, the largest domestic defence order in the country's history. Milmech Systems in Viljandi makes an 800kg tracked demining robot.

The drones built here are designed for sub-zero temperatures, high winds and GPS-denied airspace. Those are the default conditions near the Russian border.

Threod Systems reported EUR 38 million in revenue for 2024, up 87 per cent year on year. Its most significant product may not be a drone at all. The CATA pneumatic launcher can hurl strike drones weighing up to 400kg at 55 metres per second, and Ukrainian forces use it extensively. “Every time you see a long-range drone hitting a target on Russian territory, it's quite likely that our launcher was used,” Threod's commercial director told Defense News.

KrattWorks sent its Ghost Dragon quadcopters to Ukraine in mid-2022, but within 3 months Russian jamming had made them partially useless. The company responded by building a neural-network optical navigation system that flies without GPS at all. Skyeton, Ukrainian-founded with an Estonian holding entity, has delivered over 1,000 Raybird platforms with endurance up to 28 hours and has logged more than 350,000 combat flight hours. Deftak, another Ukrainian-Estonian venture, raised EUR 600,000 from Darkstar to build precision drone ammunition designed to work despite GPS jamming.

Tallinn hosts NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, established in 2008 after Russia's cyberattacks on Estonian infrastructure the year before. The centre produced the Tallinn Manual, the foundational international legal framework for cyber conflict, and runs Locked Shields, the world's largest live-fire cyber exercise with 38 participating countries.

Cybernetica, established in 1997 as a successor to a Soviet-era research institute, built X-Road, the data exchange layer that handles a billion queries a year across Estonian government systems, and the i-Voting protocol used in Estonian elections since 2005. Cybernetica now leads 3 European Defence Fund projects, including SDMMS, a secure logistics system across 11 partner countries, and is writing Estonia's roadmap for post-quantum cryptography.

Guardtime's KSI blockchain secures Estonian health records and underpins the NATO Cyber Range through a framework contract with the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments. Lockheed Martin contracted Guardtime Federal twice, in 2017 and 2020, to integrate blockchain into supply chain risk management and software assurance. CybExer Technologies provides the cyber ranges for NATO exercises including Crossed Swords and Cyber Coalition, and recently won a 3-year contract to build Luxembourg's national defence cyber range.

SensusQ, founded by a veteran of 6 combat tours, builds the Winning Mind intelligence platform, which uses AI to fuse data from drones, sensors and cyber feeds into a single operational picture. It contributes to the British Army's Project ASGARD, a digital-targeting programme designed to help weapons hit their intended targets more reliably.

C2Grid, a TalTech spin-off that raised EUR 300,000 in pre-seed funding, turns drone footage into near-real-time 3D battlefield models and has tested the system with Ukrainian frontline units. Ark Robotics builds software that coordinates swarms of autonomous ground vehicles, letting a single operator manage multiple robots on logistics and reconnaissance missions.

Defendec makes wireless ground sensors small enough to hide in undergrowth. They detect movement and classify threats along borders, and have been deployed in more than 60 countries including Moldova, Ukraine, Albania and Tajikistan. The Canadian company VOSKER later acquired Defendec.

Rantelon, founded by a TalTech professor in 1995, makes RF drone detectors and jamming guns and recently supplied Lithuania's border guard in a EUR 1.5 million contract. HEVI Optronics, named Estonia's Defence Company of the Year in 2024, builds modular electro-optical camera systems under a 7-year, EUR 200 million framework agreement with the Estonian Defence Forces.

GScan, spun out by a team of CERN physicists, uses cosmic-ray muon tomography to see through 10 metres of concrete and steel. It scanned Soviet-era nuclear submarine reactors at Paldiski with 30 times the accuracy of previous methods.

On the counter-drone side, Marduk Technologies makes the Shark, a passive electro-optical system that detects mini-drones at up to 5 kilometres without emitting any signal. The company mounted it on Milrem's THeMIS to create an autonomous mobile air defence unit. Frankenburg Technologies has built what it calls the world's smallest guided missile, 60 centimetres long and under 2 kilograms, with a terminal speed over 1,000 km/h. After 53 live-fire tests, footage showed the Mark I intercepting a Shahed-type drone in January 2026. Frankenburg raised EUR 30 million in Series A and signed a naval launch platform deal with Babcock International.

Estonia has 3,794 kilometres of coastline despite being roughly the size of the Netherlands. Baltic Workboats, based on the island of Saaremaa, has been building ships there since 1993. The shipyard has delivered over 200 vessels to more than 30 countries, including patrol boats for the Estonian Navy and pilot vessels for the Swedish Coast Guard. In January 2025, it won a EUR 110 million contract with Belgium's DAB Vloot for 80-metre pilot station vessels, diesel-electric hybrids rated for 4-metre North Sea waves.

MindChip, a TalTech spin-off, builds AI-based autonomous navigation for surface vessels. Estonia's Police and Border Guard Board plans to deploy an autonomous patrol boat on the Narva River and Lake Peipus, the eastern border with Russia. Stickleback Robotics, still in the pilot stage, is developing autonomous marine drones with 180kg payloads for round-the-clock coastal surveillance.

Estonia joined ESA in 2015, 2 years after its first satellite, ESTCube-1 built by University of Tartu students, reached orbit. CrystalSpace has since delivered over 200 space-qualified cameras, including 4 that went to the Moon on the Artemis programme's SAMPLR robotic arm built by Maxar Technologies. KappaZeta, incubated at ESA's Estonian business centre, applies AI to synthetic aperture radar satellite data for defence surveillance. Radar works through cloud, smoke, fog and darkness, which makes it useful where optical cameras fail. Spaceit, co-founded by an ESTCube-1 team member, provides cloud-based mission control. It also leads a EUR 2.5 million ESA consortium building the world's first Space Cyber Range, a cybersecurity testing ground for satellite systems hosted at CR14 in Tallinn alongside CybExer Technologies and the University of Tartu.

Eesti Arsenal in Kadrina manufactures directional anti-tank mines, including the PK-14, which has been documented in Ukrainian hands since September 2022. Eli Military Solutions builds pneumatic drone launchers and training equipment exported to more than 30 countries, including mortar simulators and pop-up infantry targets.

PowerUP Energy Technologies makes hydrogen fuel cells that do not show up on thermal imaging, giving troops a tactical advantage over diesel generators. The company first crowdfunded fuel cell units for Ukrainian drone teams, then raised EUR 10 million in Series A. Teletactica, another Ukrainian-Estonian venture, makes jam-resistant tactical radios with 1–5 per cent packet loss under heavy electronic warfare. The radios were tested in combat through Ukraine's Brave1 programme and are now being adapted to NATO standards. Wayren builds a decentralised tactical communications platform that stays operational even when packet loss exceeds 85 per cent. The Estonian Defence League used it to digitalise indirect fires, cutting kill-chain time from 7 minutes to 2.5.

Estonia is spending 5.4 per cent of GDP on defence through 2029, which amounts to EUR 10 billion from a country whose entire annual economic output is roughly EUR 40 billion. A 200-hectare defence industry park is under construction in Parnu County, with 4 companies, including Frankenburg, selected for production facilities that could open in 2027. SmartCap's EUR 100 million defence fund and Darkstar's willingness to back live munitions mean Estonian defence startups can now raise serious money without leaving the country. Explore all Estonian companies →