Manpower or equipment?

trentf

A quick look down the list of european countries by military membership shows a table in terms of figures, particularly active service personnel, which sees us 27th out of 33 european countries. Macedonia, lithuania, croatia and slovakia have populations smaller then ours yet have many more troops and equipment. The countries below have much smaller populations and their number of active service personnel is close to ours despite us having at least 2 - 3 million greater population then theirs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_European_Union


A look at the military.ie website today shows a freeze on recruitment of members of the defence forces. Are our forces too small and should we have at least 15,000 members of the df for current overseas operations? And if not should we focus on getting our attention on getting our equipment up to an acceptable level for a country of our size ? Bascially which should we focus on?

Evd-Burner

Well equipment wise i doubt we would last 24 hours against a 1st world army. We have no real air defense, our ground troops and our infrastructure would be completely annihilated. Then there would be a huge ground invasion because our naval defense would be rolled over by any real ships.

But then theres no point in arguing over any of this because all anyone is going to say is "hey who would ever attack us?"

Our defense force(have fun force, we don't have proper equipment) needs a MASSIVE injection of capital and we need to have current budgets doubled to be able to pay more soldiers and keep future procurement of modern weapons actually possible.

My two cents.

Poccington

Equipment.

However, it'll never happen because our government and opposition is full of assholes that fail to realise just how under funded the DF is. So unless some new politicians armed with at least some sense of reality show up, we're ****ed.

Evd-Burner

How much do you think would it cost to get ireland up to modern standards? 20 billion?

I'm talking:

Proper naval ships, maybe a sub.
Actual tanks and more apc's.
Some transport and attack helicopters.
Some fighter jets, so we have actual air defense.
a few real transport planes maybe a c130 or something.
And all the other little things in between.

cork1

the 20 million might be a start but what would be the cost to maintain all these new planes and choppers. it would be great to see but dont think we ever will see it.

Evd-Burner

i said 20 billion

Poccington

How much did our 139's cost?

The Canadians just got 6 Chinooks off the Yanks for $292 million. That's actual military helicopters with some proper troop transport capabilities. If we had a proper budget it'd be well within our scope to finally have some proper troop transport that could deploy Overseas.

Evd-Burner

We will never have any of those kind of things. Atleast not until something actually happens and its too late.

concussion

Poccington wrote: »

How much did our 139's cost?

12-and a bit million Euro each, including VAT.
(49 million euro for 4)

cork1

Evd-Burner wrote: »

i said 20 billion

my apologies Evd. my mistake i misread it. i still cant see any of this ever happening though. not unless we get a real government who are interested in running this country

Evd-Burner

Yep my thoughts exactly.

concussion

Realistically, doubling the budget for one year would be a massive boost for the DF. Take a budget of 1 billion euro - approximately €700 million is for pay. This leaves €300 million for absolutely everything from paper clips and photocopying to fuel and ammunition, not to mention covering training and overseas deployments. Every couple of years you'll get an injection of 60 million or whatever in capital investment as per the white paper.

Double this budget and you have a cool billion just to get some spanking new equipment and all the support packages for say, 10 years (or up to 30 for naval vessels). The next year you revert to your previous billion (or 850 million which is more realistic) and carry on. The majority of your costs for the shiny new stuff is taken care of in you support packages which have already been paid for.

In terms of manpower, the current establishment was determined to be the most efficient for the operations it conducts. It wouldn't be a surprise to see the army being reduced in the next few years in order for the NS and AC to be expanded.

Evd-Burner

Would the wages not be a bit lower than that?
I thought they would only be half a billion.

They a billion would be good in getting things but it wouldn't bring us up to the level of the likes of sweden or anything.

Morpheus

We dont need fighter jets, at least it doesnt make sense to buy them as we would buy in such small quantities as to be fairly useless.

The best air defence expenditure would be infrastructure, nation wide military radar coverage of even a basic level.

Then low medium and high altitude missile (and AA gun) defence of even a basic level, at least around major population area's and major airports.

Both of the above would be doable with a sizeably smaller budget than the fighter jets scenario.

Next should be at least a doubling of the maritime patrol assets.

Troop carrying capability with maybe 2 C-130's of even the earlier models updated. and increase the number of AW139s plus get a wing of bigger craft (doubt we'd get chinooks) but certainly could use larger troop carriers and we could definitely use attack heli's even 8 of them would be sufficient to keep enough in the air to allow us to deploy a couple abroad with the UN missions. forget fixed wing for now or at least double the PC9's and increase their roles and possibly deploy an armed wing for COIN on some missions with UN.

Im sure we could get EU funding for some of the above, didnt they contribute towards the Casa's?

Naval expansion to a force of 12 or 14 ships including blue water vessels, 2 of which have troop and equipment carrying capability plus the return of naval air assets, this time run by a totally independent maritime aviation wing.

Army takes on board more artillery which would be deployed abroad, more javelins, forget tanks for now, armoured LTV's and more APC's including doubling those for cav recce (with bigger guns please).

bigger UAV's and more of them.

Some of these above are not really for indiginous use but these are the basic things that we should be looking at in my opinion.

concussion

Evd-Burner wrote: »

Would the wages not be a bit lower than that?
I thought they would only be half a billion.

The DF is desperately trying to attain at 70:30 ratio of pay to non-pay expenses. Pay constitutes wages, allowances such as SDA, border, overseas, compensation (I think) and the big one, pensions. Hence the change in contracts over the last few years and the fact that they're looking for graduates for cadetships.

If the budget for one year is 1 billion then you have 300 million to train with. However if the budget the very next year is 850 million, then effectively you only have half the money as you have to pay the same amount of people as you did the year before.

The other problem, which I neglected to say above, is that if you get all the new kit with your extra billion, you're going to have to increase the establishment of the DF to accomodate it, leading to a further rise in costs in terms of pay, and pensions in the long run.

I'd generally agree with morpeus' suggestions, definately on the artillery, UAV and naval situation.

Evd-Burner

The two of yez really know what yez are on about...

Would love to see yez in government getting us some cool stuff.

concussion

Morphéus wrote: »

Im sure we could get EU funding for some of the above, didnt they contribute towards the Casa's?

I think that's due to their role as maritime surveillance of EU waters.

Another thing to consider would be increasing the cababilities of the RDF. If sufficient equipment and training is allocated this could boost the personnel available to the DF without having to increase overall PDF establishment. This may not be work for infantry but other corps such as artillery, engineers, mp's and cis could be trained to an effective level, allowing a larger percentage of troops in CS and CSS units to be reservists and therefore having more PDF as infantry.

Morpheus

Sadly as an RDF member and a grunt at that, I must agree with you, we do need more emphasis on those reserve assets most needed and valued the PDF and ones which could be mobilised when needed on missions. Although I think an indigenous RDF infantry unit of Battalion size (at least), should be kept and run as integrated reservists, possibly centralised in the eastern brigade due to its close aproximation with gormanston dublin curragh and wicklow training areas.

Morpheus

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/minister-wants-8364104m-to-buy-new-boats-for-navy-1884076.html

DEFENCE Minister, Willie O'Dea, is to seek almost €104m for two new patrol vessels and a sail training ship to replace the Asgard which sank off the French coast last year.

Minister O'Dea, visiting Haulbowline Naval Base -- said it was vital the Defence Forces has the equipment required for the vital tasks they are asked to undertake.

The LE Emer, LE Aoife and LE Aisling are all due for replacement after a 30-year lifespan.

Two new Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPVs) will cost around €50m each -- but the Minister will not be seeking €100m funding at this point for a larger Extended Patrol Vessel (EPV).

Mr O'Dea bluntly warned about the dangers of cutting Defence Force personnel to levels at which the three services simply cannot function.

He said the services have already taken personnel reductions, reducing them in size from 14,000 to 10,500, while the McCarthy report recommended another 500.

Minister O'Dea stressed that the Defence Forces require specific personnel levels if the demands placed on it by the State are to be met.

"Certainly we are getting near the limits of what we can take obviously," he said.

His Department wants permission from the Department of Finance to spend the €3.8m the insurers have paid for the Asgard.

The €180m naval vessel replacement programme has already been held up by cuts in the 2009 Budget and An Bord Snip Nua has also proposed a further delay.

Now, after a tender competition overseen by the Department of Defence, a proposal for two new OPVs has been identified.

The vessel replacement programme includes an option on a third OPV and proposes the purchase of an Extended Patrol Vessel costing €100m, and an option on a second EPV.

OS119

^^^what are the odds that he'll get the money?^^^

to answer the original question: equipment, and force-mutliplying equipment at that.

1. helicopters that can enable a force to dominate a much larger area than it could do on foot/wheels/tracks.

2.ISR (intelligence, surveilance and reconnaisance) assets that allow those forces to be put in the right place at the right time. perhaps a modular UAV buy that could provide both an 'army' themed UAV and a 'fisheries protection/anti-smuggling' themed UAV for home use.

3. a significant fire-power (Artillery, Javelin, mortars, 40mm UBGL's and LMG's) upgrade in line with the experience of, and lessons learned by, contemporary western armies in combat.

4. massively increased ground mobility in hardened assets - more MOWAGS.

5. a concentration, not just on assets, but the ability to keep them in action while they are deployed - the IA is woefully short of the logistic capability to maintain just 10% of its combat power in the field.

6. forget air defence, keep the MANPADS for deployment with main forces but dump the rest, its a total waste of effort. ditch the PC-9's, even if they could be uprated from COIN and then deployed, they use a very large slice of a not very big pie for not a lot of capability.