The former commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, General Martin Herem, is joining the Estonian robotics and autonomous systems developer, Milrem Robotics, in August, as a military strategy advisor.
According to a statement by Milrem, Herem’s role will be to bridge the gap between end-user requirements and product development, specifically leading the process of assessing lessons learned in Ukraine and converting them into use cases for land robotics in the future. Herem will also advise the company’s management, business development and capability development units in decision-making from a military user perspective.
“Milrem Robotics is deploying ground robotic systems on a larger scale in different countries, and it’s very important that this new capability will match and augment existing defence capabilities,” Kuldar Väärsi, the CEO of Milrem, said in a statement.
“General Herem has extensive knowledge of how to build deployable military capabilities in efficient and smart ways. He will support Milrem in providing even better and more matching system-level solutions based on ground robotics,” he added.
Implementing Ukrainian know-how in future robotics
“The war in Ukraine and the usage of Milrem Robotics’ THeMIS and other ground robots on the battlefield has demonstrated the importance of these systems and the growing need to develop them further so that they can better fulfil their mission – keeping soldiers as far from danger as possible,” Herem said.
“My goal will be to ensure that what has been learned on the Ukrainian battlefield will be implemented in future robotic systems.”
General Herem was the commander of the Estonian Defence Forces from December 2018 up to the end of June 2024. He entered service in 1992. From 2013 to 2016, he served as the Commandant of the Estonian National Defence College and from 2016 to 2018 Chief of Staff of the Headquarters of the Estonian Defence Forces. Herem was one of the re-founding members of the paramilitary Estonian Defence League in 1990.
Milrem is an Estonian-founded robotics and autonomous systems developer, with offices in Estonia, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland and the US. The company is known for its THeMIS and Multiscope UGVs, the Type-X Robotic Combat Vehicle and MIFIK intelligent autonomous functionalities for defence platforms.
