Ireland's defensive frailty exposed by Russian exercise

I'm not arguing about how much needs to be spent, just asking why 🤔

My belief is we certainly need to Patrol our Territorial waters re smuggling, Fisheries, Search and rescue etc , I've never got this Defence Narrative with the exception of defending against say drug trafficking etc.

The notion we need to spend billions patrolling a relatively small area seems odd to me.

There's an impression we need to be ready for a mass invasion, world war 3 so to speak with would be utterly futile . We are a small , Neutral Nation , not even members of Nato and some seem to think we need to compete with nations who spend Billions, yearly.

I'm certainly no Naval expert but from what I can see Government is actually intent in reducing Naval spending and as it is there's barely enough personel to operate existing fleet

Read the first line and went for forks sake here's another one ,

I was right

To keep it simple we don't need to spend hundreds of billions ,no Aircraft Carriers 🤦,

No stealth aircraft or bombers ,

No Submarines nuclear or otherwise

No Galaxy class intergalactic exploration vessels with the latest warpcore drives.

Just radar

Jets

Boats

Armour

Helicopters

Talking about triggered !

A nice quote, but aiming it at Ireland and the Irish military seems just a teeny bit, well unfair to me lol!

(Apart from US) maybe dare I say it Russia is a fairer target given current sabre rattling (which relies on having those "high class muscle men" ready & looming in the background to work), but that would not go down very well with many posters I suppose, with their grá for Putin "playing a blinder" etc!

It's a fair question but what is Neutrality exactly 🤔 why the need to defend against the fact we as a nation are never going to get involved in conflict. How likely, Honestly, is it Ireland will be invaded by a hostile nation seriously. I'd wager if an when that ever happened, most of the world will have been at war by then so at that stage, what's left to defend 🤔, I'm not being Glib , simply trying to understand the entire logic of needing a defence strategy in the first place, certainly protect our Coastline from manageable threats, Drugs etc but beyond a few examples , a small , well financed patrol service is all that is required.

And where are you going to get this 3 billion a year? Magic money tree's in your back garden? No Irish person with common sense will want us to increase taxes for military defence when we're already in debt and have a housing crisis.

It's called whataboutry.

Murica did this and murica did that,

Strategically important to whom exactly 🤔 serious question , as I've said when and if we are ever invaded , we'll have far more to concern ourselves with and let's be honest, no amount of expenditure could stop an invasion by a far bigger and better equipped nation.

We are officially and legally Neutral but I do accept your points overall .

I'm all for a properly funded and managed "Patrol Service" for the reasons I've outlined, we've absolutely no business spending vast sums on equipment we'll likely , never, ever get to use.

€800m is grand so, there's no need to spend any more. Theirs no chance of Ireland been invaded and sure if we were we wouldn't have a hope of defending ourselves anyway. Just because we waste money on other stuff doesn't mean it's also ok to waste money on defence

Our opinions are not mutually exclusive, and I agree that it is a big frustration that Russia did not normalise into a normal amicable partner like our other European neighbours from behind the former Iron Curtain. Putin's argument is that:

1) NATO follows a US-led policy of Russian encirclement even though the USSR is over and there was an earlier gentleman's agreement not to expand it to Russia's border. Hence, Finland's careful balancing of interests, for example.

2) The US and allies, either with or through NATO, have conducted regime change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, which has arguably created failed states. Now this is no longer true of Iraq, and the Afghanistan occupation was understandable after 9/11, but the the thought is that morals are bent to fit Western ideals (hence Mujahideen, sponsorship of Islamist rebels in Syria, alliance with Saudi Arabia, etc.).

Whereas I can understand and accept that the small Baltic states join NATO, it is not the same for Ukraine, where the population is split between nationalists and pro-Russians on an E-W basis. If they join NATO, the Russians will annex the Donbass and militarise the new frontier. It is that simple.

But we know there was no agreement that nato wouldn't expand East, it was never mentioned bar a single meeting it wasn't agreed on ,no binding agreement or treaties .

We also know Nato are not surrounding or have surrounded Russia ,a quick look at google maps ends that notion,

Nato didn't go in to Afghanistan to change the regime , Afghanistan was being ruled by a death cult ,non elected , not recognised as a legitimate government ,and the only reason why Nato were there in the first place was Russias invasion and massacre of the then government . before burning the country to the ground ,all before nato involvement ,

Libya was an uprising Gaddafi tried to quash with his military and foreign mercenaries as the country went into full civil war ,yes nato carried out limited strikes but Gaddafi was toppled by Libyans ,but someone needs to explain what Russian forces are currently doing in Libya trying to depose the now recognised government .

Ukraine is not as divided as people are claiming pretty much repeating russian propaganda , nationalist ,the far right threats of genocide against the Russian population it's all bullshit , how many times do the Ukrainian people have to stand up and say we are ukraine and not Russia they want what what's their absolute right ,to choose their destiny as a country ,we know they Don't want to be Russian .

They are Ukrainian and proud they want democracy, reforms,and close relationships with Europe

It's not putins choice

I think if we beefed up the Irish defence forces they would still be not used for our defence, they would just be used to increase out involvement in UN peacekeeping in other countries or we would be sent to the Ukraine Russian border. So basically subsidising other countries defences. We owe alot of money, let's try to work in reducing that.

One of the big arguments for not spending and slowly winding down the army (which is essentially also the government position for years) is because we live in a relatively benign part of the world and have big brother the UK and the US to do all that big stuff for us.

Irish popular culture is all about our fights with the Brits, our fierce independence from Britain and the distinction between Irish and British culture. We hate it when foreigners mistake us for British and so on. Yet when the big boys are out prowling we run behind Mother Britain's skirt and then when the danger has passed we shout a few insults after them like a little child. This calls into question Ireland's whole raison d'etre as an independent country, we are like feckless teenagers that are still living under their parent's roof and spending all their money on drink and girls.

Look at Denmark a country of similar population to Ireland sending three fighter jets and personel to Lithuania. Remember when Boris Yeltsin came to Shannon and he stayed on the plane asleep , he wouldn't have done that if he was arriving in France Uk or Portugal, we were just not important enough

It's about time they got off their holes and did something for the defense forces as a whole.

On the shopping list

Radar

Boats.

Jets

Helicopters

Armour.

Sounds familiar for some reason I only Hope its not kicked down the road to 2030s or 40s

Total direct costs of overseas peace support operations to the Irish taxpayers were €53.1 in 2018…

Approximately 540 million per decade of taxpayers money gone, to supposedly make the world a safer and better place, to fix problems not of our making… in those countries. Do we expect others will come to OUR aid when shiît hits the fan ?

if we have that sort of cash to be throwing at others thousands of miles away yet haven’t got a single aircraft capable of defending our airspace ? That’s a joke.

we’ve been caught off guard… fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Ethiopians have 29 combat aircraft as well as dozens of transport and logistical support aircraft…

over the past 5 years we’ve given Ethiopia…. 165 million…

Meanwhile, we have 8 of these with which to defend us..

Aircraft is primarily for training.

Just in case this is wondering this is what the Ethiopian airforce flies

According to what I’ve read that’s not the case, I was interested in finding that out myself.

training ? Sure it’s useful, but we still have no air defence whatsoever… if we were attacked we’d just be wiped out from the air in the main… fûck all use a few trips away will do to help, a fleet of aircraft capable of putting up some defence however…

Can’t afford them… we are sending millions to Ethiopia in aid… and them, with a fleet of them, that’s how laughably nutsville this is…

Right so we are still massively down on the deal…a corporal as an example is on over 512 euros a WEEK….all the ancillary expenses, transport, accommodation, is deployment/overseas pay a thing ?