Russia - threadbanned users in OP

If only armies had engineers that could build ports quickly. Or build and repair landing strips. That sort of thing would have been handy in the past. I bet they would have loved it at d-day for example. It would have prevented them from having to just dump stuff off shore after the original invasion and just hope it floated in.

Editing to add: I don't think we have to worry about the Russians invading at the moment. Not after their abysmal performance in Ukraine. But a genuine superpower could. And that was the point. Because of their strategic locations, countries like ireland and iceland are worth targeting. The chances are slim that the situation would arise where it would happen, it would have to be a truly global conflict, but it's not beyond reason to think it might.

Fully agree. We could easily specialise in something like logistics, medical support, naval support etc and make a decent contribution. It’s the selfish free loading that I find objectionable . Building up the army and defence to deal with all hypothetical threats is unnecessary. Contributing something to the wider defence of Europe and the western world is necessary.

There's not as much to discuss. The conflict has "slowed" quite a bit. New developments have also decreased.

..

:D

Well it's a hypothetical future but at this moment in time absolutely I would expect the US to intervene on our behalf if we were being invaded. It's one of the reasons we let things like transport of prisoners slide in Shannon but also historically the us has always supported Irish independence

Right now with Biden in power its pretty much a forgone conclusion that the US back Ireland if we're invaded. You get Trump or someone of his ilk in charge and we'll be left swinging. Then again, with Trump in charge, Putin could probably have annexed the Baltics and they wouldn't have got backing such was his distain for NATO.

I think we need to join NATO, get their input on what they want to see on the Island. I'm guessing it will be upgraded radar, anti ship missiles and possibly a mobile SAM launcher or two. It won't be huge but it would be a deterrent to anyone with designs on attacking us just because its so easy as it stands.

Tsk tsk.

Towing from the top link. Driver will be fired.

At the very least as a member of the EU we need to stop behaving so selfishly and being free loaders when it comes to defense and upgrade our military and overall security capabilities until we have a legitimate defense capability and are carrying our weight in terms of overall European security. Our current selfishness is not just about not spending enough on defense it is also the mentality that well its highly unlikely that we will be attacked so feck it no need to spend on defense let other countries do that. We are part of the EU and better off for it overall as being part of the collective gives us so much more then just been out there on our own. We need to pull our weight as well on defense with the mentality of being part of a bigger overall picture and stop being so selfish.

The EU was a trading block. It has been much much more for at least three decades now.

The hint is in the name.

There’s a realistic balance to be struck. We aren’t strategically all that significant but we aren’t entirely irrelevant either. I think we have been naive about our position and our defence, particularly in areas like cyber security, being abused as a weak spot for espionage and having an inability to use active radar to protect flight paths.

We need to improve our defence infrastructure but we also don’t need to totally lose the run of ourselves either. We are absolutely not in the high risk position Ukraine is in nor that Finland, Sweden, Poland, Estonia etc all find themselves in.

We are too close to the UK, US and also France to be at significant risk.

I think that Russian missile test in the Atlantic however is a bit of a wake up call and so is the weird infrastructure that Russia was trying to build at the embassy.

We can’t just take things absolutely for granted either and I think we do need to formalise our defence relationships with the neighbouring countries, even if that doesn’t involve joining NATO.

I would see a future for Ireland investing in high tech, coast effective defence of the island, mostly focused on advanced radar, maybe some drone capabilities and a lot of cyber security, which probably should draw on support from some of the mega IT companies with a lot of infrastructure here.

I would also think it’s quite urgent that we wind down the scale of the embassy. There’s ludicrously oversized diplomatic operations relative to scale of trade and population. Either just end diplomatic relationships or reduce it to just the ambassador and a couple of support staff. We didn’t even have a USSR embassy here until the early 70s and we frankly don’t need that level of diplomacy. The prospects for normal relations between anywhere and Russia are dim at this stage.