Today, in order to protect the overriding public interest, which is the ensuring of national security, the Ministry of Defence contacted the Police and Border Guard Board (PBGB) with a request to enforce a prohibition on stay in the Aidu Wind Park, until the threat at the object can be addressed. The Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority also submitted an application to the PBGB for the implementation of a new prohibition on stay from 27 April.
‘During peacetime, a direct threat is associated with the need to acquire advance warning of airspace related information and to ensure the safety our own military flights and those of our allies. Those flights are directly associated with the military defence of Estonia’s and NATO’s eastern border,’ said Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence Kristjan Prikk. The Permanent Secretary added that NATO has established clear requirements regarding the distance and height of objects that should be visible to us from the air. ‘We must fulfil those requirements, since allied air operations are also taking place here, for the occurrence of which we must, among other things, offer them support using our own air surveillance equipment,’ said Prikk.
Permanent Secretary Prikk cited the reduction in signals intelligence capability as the second significant security threat posed by the erection of windmills that are in excess of the maximum permitted height. ‘We are no longer able to acquire information at the present levels for the defence of our country, thereby decreasing our ability to obtain timely insight into military actions being planned against us,’ stated Prikk. The Permanent Secretary stressed that it takes longer to mobilise a reserve army than it does to implement units in a permanent state of readiness, and therefore the functioning of early warning to the maximum degree possible is of vital importance for Estonia. Kristjan Prikk added that the question may not be about days, but hours.
‘Thirdly, we cannot allow a situation in which we would have to send our soldiers to the front line and tell them that we are unable to predict at the previous level what will happen over the course of the next few hours and what action is being prepared,' said Kristjan Prikk. He added that the lives of entire military units could not be placed in danger because of a lack of timely information about an adversary’s manoeuvres.
The Ministry of Defence has repeatedly directed attention to the fact that, in terms of their parameters, the windmills currently under construction at Aidu do not conform to those windmills in the preliminary design approved by the Ministry in 2012.
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