Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

For a long time the US said they wouldn't build them. Now they are. Who has bought them.

Who in their right mind would invade the Ukraine.

by your logic we could scrap the entire defence forces.. “ who in their right mind would invade Ireland “

you don’t have a defence force just to stave off an invasion you have it to defend against any attack.

I mean the US Air force said they didn't want new build F16's. I know they are being built for export.

So I don't get your posts, if you know they are for export whats the issue? LM (sorry the other guys, not sure why I said Boeing) will keep selling them as long as people want to buy them, at this stage the newest variants vastly exceed the capabilities of the F16's in US service though they are getting life extensions due to the replacement rate of the F35. Also technically you could argue the US is currently buying them for Taiwan.

A ridiculous comparison, the Ukrainian invasion has been coming for years. We are a neutral country, is this not one of the issues Putin has with Ukraine along with the threat of them joining NATO? Does the Ukraine have the same ties to the US and GB as Ireland? Like I said a silly comparison. Ireland is swimming in 237bn national debt, our health service is a joke, not to mention housing and people want to spend millions on big boys toys that will never be used except the odd joy ride around the country.

When you say Neural does it include the following?

1. Allowing American Military aircraft to refuel in shannon ( An keep it open in the early 2010s)

2. Allowing Aerflot use it during the height of the cold war

3. Allowing Dirty Russian Money hide in the IFSC

4. Allow unknown aircraft fly through Irish Air space possabilly causing an incident with civilian Aircraft.

5. Being neutral does that also mean being able to sit on the fence eating your corn flakes while we watch people be massacred?

The Slovakians are buying new F16s to replace their Mig 29s, deliveries starting in the mid 2020s.

A couple of points,

1. Ireland is not a constitutionally politically and militarily neutral country, Our constitution prevents us from declaring war on any other country but allows us to enter a war if it comes to us. That's it.
2. The Irish approach of undefended "neutrality" is unique in the world, and is nothing more than a shambolic cost cutting exercise. Other actually neutral countries around the world spend heavily on their defence budgets as they understand that while the chances of being attacked and of going to war are very slim, there is a requirement to provide a realistic defence for their people should the worst happen. The Irish attitude of "ah sure who would want to attack us" won't save us should the big bad wolf come huffing ad puffing at our door. Some examples of neutral counties in Europe are: Sweden, Pop: 10.3m, def budget: $7.18bn, Finland, pop: 5.53m, def budget: $6.26bn, Austria, pop: 8.9m, def budget: $2.92bn, and then there's Ireland, pop: 5m, def budget: $842m.
3. As for other departments, that the DF does what it does with what it has is exceptional. Last year Social Protection budget was €33bn, Health was €21.7bn vs DF €780m, Even if the DF was properly funded and the budget was increased to €3bn it still would only come to 14% the Health budget and 9% the Social Protection budget.
4. Irish people have a habit of thinking we're the happy go lucky paddies, sure nobody is going to attack us and sure the UK and US will come to rescue us if that does happen. Ukraine should show you that this is not necessarily the case. Ukraine is able to put up the defence they did because they had the base line to work from. If a similar situation were to happen here, Ireland as we know it would be wiped off the map while the UK and US were deciding whether or not to help. We cannot keep relying on others for our defence. We have to put on our big boy pants at some point and realise that if we want to pretend to be neutral then we had better put the bloody resources into doing it properly.

Finland and Sweden have started down road to joining Nato. Because they aren't fecking silly.

Dont feed the troll Dohvolle. This same dogooder was probably one of the first to moan about the fact that the fishing industry stopped Russian war games from happening off our coast a couple of months ago, and the fact that our defence forces were basically helpless.

I'm curious, which one of my posts do you think is trolling? Or do you regard anyone with a different opinion a troll?

The region around Ukraine has a long history of aggression and hostility as shown by Russia's recent invasion. On the other hand, we here in Ireland get on relatively well with our neighbors I can't see the UK or US invading us anytime soon..

This is an Internet forum and last time I checked threads are not private and are open for anyone to wander in and express their opinion at any given time, if that upsets you then perhaps the internet is NOT the place for you, there fixed that for you. It's a fact that one of the major beefs the Russians have with Ukraine was their intentions to join NATO, how is this regarded as Kremlin propaganda?

As a tax payer I am entitled to my opinion on how our Taxes are spent. And in my opinion we should not be wasting money on our military to prepare for an invasion that will in all likelihood never happen and if it did we are close ally's with two of the largest military forces in the world.

Clearly the Irish defence forces are using the Russian invasion as leverage to lobby for an increase in our military spending.

I've no idea where the concept that we are 'neutral' comes from - maybe from the WW2 era.

We are actually a non-aligned nation and always have been - in the Cold War the USSR were allowed to land and use the facilites at Shannon on their way to Cuba - currently the US Air Force land at Shannon and no one bats an eyelid.

We are also in NATO - Yes NATO - the partership for peace part - ok not 'full blown' NATO but still involved.

We are also aligned with the EU Force which I presume will be a forerunner of any EU Military outfit - we go on exercies in Finland etc. to train.

People then have some notion that joining NATO would mean spending massive amounts of money to buy jets etc. - Just an example but Iceland in their wisdom rent out Keflavik Air Force Base to the US Air Force - the US stay on base only and are not allowed off. - Iceland gets to be in the NATO Umbrella and benefits from that - however they have no Army.

The current 'arrangement' of getting paid for the use of Shannon needs to be quantified more and understood - maybe we could benefit more if it was just leased out to the US Altogether.

EDIT: I think the best way we could contribute currently to the world situation would be to setup at least 2 fully equipped hospital ships and/or hospital aircraft - they would allow us to bring our own people home from conflict zones and also to run missions of mercy as deemed fit by our government.

All of them 😂