Time to admit defeat, scrap the navy?

sparky42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121024173#Comment_121024173

Apart from that, I love the basic premise of the post, the Navy is in dire straits because we as a nation won’t invest in it, let’s instead spend more on some sort of private body to do it instead…

Cause that makes sense?

Dohvolle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121025103#Comment_121025103

"I'm selling my car because I can't afford to run it. Instead I intend to go everywhere by chauffeur driven limo."

Firblog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121025103#Comment_121025103

Bristow signs Irish SAR contract | AirMed&Rescue (airmedandrescue.com)

It makes sense to contract out services which the state has proven it is unsuited to incapable of delivering.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121025103#Comment_121025103

That's the Thatcher way. FG hard-on territory

sparky42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121028872#Comment_121028872

And the point is? Oh yeah the state is spending much more on a private service than it would have “in house”. When you consider the difference between engineering officer pay in private sector or other semi state bodies for example your suggestion is going to cost several times what the NS costs.

Montage of Feck

As an island the sea is our biggest natural asset. Guarding it should be our first military priority even if that means cutting the army down.

Dohvolle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121028887#Comment_121028887

Careful now.... thats fighting talk.

The fact an island nation has a military with a ratio of 7:1:1 for Ground:Air:Sea when our only land border is with a friendly nation, and our army is not independently deploy-able by sea or air, and our defence HQ is loaded at the top with Army colonels without any obvious responsibility but who's appointments are not open to those outside the army is a fact rarely accepted.

Indeed the opposition from the same DFHQ to the change in the make up of the General staff as recommended by CoDF has been a sight to sea. Why would they be so afraid of the chief of the navy, Air corps and Army having equal standing instead of being equal only at brigade level.

It's as if they are protecting their own little empire or something.

Firblog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121028884#Comment_121028884

Why was the SAR put out for tender? Why do we get the private sector to carry out so many functions that the could be carried out "in house"? Because the "in house" solution has turned out to be massively expensive and sh*t so many times - and no one is ever held responsible.

RavenP

There are other reasons for privatisation. For a start neo-liberal governments like to transfer tax money from the tax payer to business. A good way to do that is to under fund the service you want to privatise, make reforms that make it worse and then throw up the hands and say “privatise”! The problem is, though, for certain core services,the things that are hard to put a monetary value on like saving lives or providing core infrastructure, it tends not to work out long term. Look at the U.K. to see how bad it has gone for them with everything from transport to energy. Some things should not be in the public sector, some things should not be in the private, but done by the state. The problem in Ireland is a belief that neutrality means we do not need defence, which is untrue.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121029331#Comment_121029331

Just look at Telecom Éireann

roadmaster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121028962#Comment_121028962

It will be interesting to see what the new head of Army Design does they could recommed less managment with only a handfull bases throughout the island for the Army

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121019222#Comment_121019222

And your solution for say preventing drug trafficking, or illegal fishing etc... would be what exactly and keep in mind that the Irish territorial waters dwarf our land mass....

Jazz Hands

The sooner an EU defence force is setup the better.

The Irish Defence Forces couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery let alone workout how to defend the country no matter how much money you would throw at it.

RavenP

The problem is not the DF, it is with the government and Department of Defence.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121029951#Comment_121029951

Not going to happen. NATO is the supreme military alliance in Europe, now more than ever. The PfP is the methodology to include non NATO EU members in activities.

The EU is all very well as a bureaucratic platform to share the economies of scale of bulk research and procurement, but it is not a military body and in the wake of the Ukraine war - and it has to be said the strong presence of the UK in the material support of Ukraine - I daresay an operational EU military command is further away than ever.

Fisheries and piracy are one thing, warfighting is a whole different ballgame.

Jazz Hands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121030647#Comment_121030647

I think it will happen with the EU pulling its funds and resources together. No country in the EU can fund there own equipment so will want to use EU budgets to spread the cost.

Ireland will have ships and jets stationed here which will be directed from Brussels.

NATO is a flip flop organisation as it depends who's in the white house.

sparky42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121030709#Comment_121030709

? No country? So who pays for Frances nuclear force and all its costs? Oh yeah the French taxpayer. Nations do joint projects (with varying degrees of success) but that’s not even close to being a centralised EU force. I’m sure next you are going to be telling us the Germans are all going to conscript us?

Jazz Hands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121030824#Comment_121030824

Stop crying.

I believe at dome stage that there will be an EU Defence force funded and governed by the EU.

sparky42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121031109#Comment_121031109

Sorry, you just made me laugh so hard.

Dohvolle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121029331#Comment_121029331

Thatcherism.

Would down state run operations and let civilians run it instead for profit. Except these services cannot make a profit, so instead the taxpayer has to pay the contractor more than it did when it was state run so the contractor can make a profit.

British Coal, Gas, Steel. They were first to go. Sold to private enterprise, & run into the ground before being stripped of assets.

British Rail was next, took the best rail network in the world, privatised it and watched it grind to a halt. In the 80s you could traverse the length and breath of the UK for small change. Now you can still do it, but if you want a seat that'll be 10 times the price of a standard ticket, and most of the carriages will be 1st class only. Provincial services will be short of carriages, so the days of having room for bicycles or luggage are gone.

They tried hard with health to privatise that too, force everyone to pay big money to private health insurers but that failed when the private waiting lists got longer than the public ones.

40 years on the UK realised this was a mistake and is gradually accepting some things need to be funded and operated by the state.

FG have followed thatcherite policies for the last 40 years, seemingly unaware of the chaos the same policies have caused in the UK.

For the last few years a private contractor has been doing fishery inspections on behalf of the SFPA because the Naval service can no longer commit to the patrol days it requires.

After 30 years of underfunding, the Air Corps lost SAR to private contractors too, who ironically ended up using the same type the Air Corps tried, but failed to buy.

Both the Air Corps and Naval service carried out these tasks as part of their SECONDARY role of Aid to the Civil power/Aid tot he Civil Authority.

Successive governments have ignored that their primary role, Defence of the state, still needs to be done, and cannot be done by private contractor, unless you want to pay huge sums of money to people with questionable intent.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121031109#Comment_121031109

All that tells us is that you don’t understand very much about the nature of the EU and more importantly the mind set of the average mainland EU citizen! Not surprising since you don’t live among the fallout of two world wars! You’ll get coordination in purchasing and administration, join missions and even possibly some joint units, but that is it. The average EU citizen will not be willing to go beyond that.

RavenP

i was in England a couple of years ago, I was in Bristol and my friend lived in Oxford. I wanted to get the train to visit him. It would have cost about £200 return, to do a journey not much more than Dublin to Belfast. I hope we change course soon. I don’t think FG are quite as corrupt as the British Tories, who know exactly what they are doing and know it is destroying their countries infrastructure, but do not care as long as their pals make money.I do think, however, that FG are blinded by ideology on the one hand, and like to think they are high rollers as well . Alas FF do not seem to have a strong enough counter narrative and I have little faith in SF, they are inexperienced in government, too populist and have not put enough blue water between themselves and the provos campaign .

Firblog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121028884#Comment_121028884

So the state cannot compete with the private sector in what they pay engineers?

Q: Why don't they increase the pay of engineers to compete?

A: Because every other rank will want a pay increase too - to maintain parity, couldn't have an engineer getting paid more than the captain or first officer of the ship.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121029915#Comment_121029915

The navy isn't exactly preventing much of anything the way it is at the minute now is it? You want to spend 100's of millions on ships which will be stuck in port most of their life? There is no need for ships to patrol our waters, it's a waste of time and manpower; drones could patrol our seas much more efficiently and be used to direct fishery protection vessels to suspected illegal fishing, or direct the Gardai to where drug trafficker's are going to land.

Dohvolle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121034659#Comment_121034659

https://youtu.be/YLcAc8DsMI0?si=jUDUMeWq6YmsnY57

Riiiiight.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121019807#Comment_121019807

Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabach show no such thing, as any of the professionals in the sector will tell you. Drones have merely become an additional component in all-arms warfare, both a factor in offense and for defensive consideration. They have not yet become the dominant form of combat.

Manic Moran

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121023137#Comment_121023137

[MOD] I am not a moderator over on the EV subforum. I neither know nor care what their policies are. However, let's take this at face value, that there are a few interested, well-meaning parties taking a particular viewpoint on matters. Sparky42's position above on inaccurate premises not being discussion holds. It is quite possible that the many folks starting multiple electric car threads actually know what they're talking about in the subject matter. That does not apply given a number of the statements on this thread. Be they honestly held mistaken beliefs, or beliefs put forward for the sake of trolling, the end result is the same. If you don't like being corrected by people who know more on the subject matter than you do, then that's your concern. When it comes to the political questions of the role of the Navy, I would refer you to both the political guidance given to the defence forces, and the recent independent commission on the defence forces which have stated the framework in which the State is to best operate.

That's not to say that there are no legitimate alternate viewpoints on how to do things. I note, for example, Iceland has a coast guard to perform the roles the Irish Naval Service tends to spend most of its time at, but it's also worth noting that as members of NATO, anything which requires a little more capability is provided by treaty. Such arguments need to be substantiated on something better than misunderstanding the tooth-to-tail ratio of a modern navy.

I'm not going to shut down this thread (for now), but am going to insist that all parties continue in future within the political framework set out. The government has said Ireland needs a navy. The Commission on Defence Forces has said Ireland needs a navy. If posters disagree with these political decisions, or the relative allocations of funds per department from the Minister of Finance and Minister for Public Expenditure & Reform's budget, then I suggest they take it to the Politics forum. The military is an executive branch. This forum primarily exists for discussion on how best to execute political guidance.[/MOD]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121020852#Comment_121020852

You really need to tag me so that I get the notification.

Jazz Hands

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121032453#Comment_121032453

Where have you lived on mainland Europe?

sparky42

Just to highlight that such issues aren't unique to our Navy, one of the sites that follows the RN is pointing out that currently none of their SSNs are out on patrol and some of which (any of which costs more than the entire NS combined) haven't sailed in over a year... And yes crewing is one of the issues they face. It's not a unique problem for Western militaries at the moment, our issue is given how small the NS has always been we lack the depth that others have.

mikeym

Nobody talking about improving pay & morale. Thats whats killing the place.

Dohvolle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121059546#Comment_121059546

How do you fix morale?