Defence investment centre to limit publicity for newly acquired equipment

Estonia’s State Defence Investment Centre will reduce its coverage of ceremonial events and newly acquired equipment, ERR reported, citing communications chief Kerly Virk.

Virk said the centre was changing its communications principles and would focus less on ribbon-cuttings and announcements about individual buildings, systems and equipment items.

“We used to mark every stage of new buildings, systems and capabilities with ceremonies, ribbon-cuttings, refreshments and all the associated festivity. At present, this simply does not seem appropriate: we are preparing for war, and for every euro we must ask whether it genuinely helps strengthen our defence capability,” Virk wrote on social media.

She said that a new building or piece of equipment was only one part of a larger system and did not by itself create a complete capability.

“We want to speak out when something truly important has been achieved, when we have developed a capability that genuinely makes Estonia stronger and helps it defend itself,” Virk said. “This is not about speaking less, but about focusing more on things that have a real overall impact.”

ERR asked the centre, which has been at the centre of a major scandal this week, whether reducing communications would make it harder for the public to understand where money was going and what was being acquired as defence spending increased.

Virk said the centre had reassessed a practice in which ceremonial events were too often at the centre of public communications, even though the resulting individual item had not yet created an actual military capability for the defence forces.

“If only one part of a larger system arrives, that does not mean the defence forces already have an operational capability that can be used militarily,” she said. “Communicating too ceremonially and too early can create a misleading impression among the public that the capability has already been achieved.”

She said the centre would therefore link major public communications more closely to capabilities that had actually been achieved.

For example, the centre would not issue a press release when the radar tower at Kõpu was completed, but would announce it when the radar was actually operational, Virk said.

“We will not hold a media event when Iris-T batteries arrive at the port. We will speak about the capability when the defence forces have gained an initial understanding of how to genuinely use the system,” she said.

Virk added that this did not mean interim stages were unimportant or that workers would not be recognised at events such as topping-out ceremonies.

She said broader public coverage would accompany projects once their various components formed a sufficient whole.

“The focus of the State Defence Investment Centre’s communications will not be the finale of the procurement process, but its beginning,” Virk said. The aim would be to encourage companies to participate in tenders, increase competition and attract more good bidders.

The centre also wanted to highlight the years of work by its staff in planning and conducting procurements, negotiating, finding solutions and reaching results, she said.

“At a time when we are preparing for war, continuous celebration is not appropriate in our view. We are critically reviewing what we spend our time, money and attention on,” Virk said.

She stressed that the centre was not reducing its communications overall, but was significantly scaling back the practice of putting various ceremonial events at the centre of its public messaging.