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During a meeting with Estonia's Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur in Tallinn on Tuesday, Dutch Minister of Defense Kajsa Ollongren announced that after the renovation of the runway of the Amari air base in Estonia, the Netherlands will station F-35 fifth-generation stealth fighter jets at Amari to perform the Baltic air policing mission.
«The Netherlands is the first country to take over air policing at the renovated Amari air base, and this is a strong message that it will be carried out with the most modern stealth fighters,» Pevkur said after the meeting with his Dutch counterpart.
In addition, the ministers discussed assistance to Ukraine.
«Similarly to Estonia, the Netherlands has provided Ukraine with a significant amount of military assistance and has clearly shown that both our values and our general understanding of the need to strengthen security are similar. I am also pleased that the Netherlands is contributing to the IT coalition driven by us and Luxembourg, through which we support Ukraine in developing communications capabilities,» the Estonian minister said according to spokespeople.
Estonia and the Netherlands are the only two countries that are members of all the major defense cooperation formats in the region. Estonia has procured a significant amount of technical equipment from the Netherlands, including armored vehicles, offroad vehicles and medical vehicles. Regionally, the Netherlands contributes to security as part of the NATO Battlegroup in Lithuania. So far, the Netherlands has performed four rotations on the Baltic air policing mission.