Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

I think your put downs are almost as useless as a squadron of Gripens.

Jonny, coming from you, I take that as a great compliment.

We'll let yourself, Larbre and Dohvolle play soldier and hope that sense prevails in Newbridge.

Is it a "Nirvana fallacy" to believe that an island that will drag itself kicking and screaming to a future defence budget of €1.5bn p/a should think of nothing else but an actual navy, and only then consider anything resembling an air combat arm?

How many times in that situation has a military intervention lead to no deaths.

They still died, and tbh the military aircraft did nothing.

Jesus Christ. A330s plowing into Croke Park.

Why can't we do all things? Did you misread LOA2 as a bump to €1.5trillion?

If the Commission is to be believed, they have considered your threat, the threat of someone flying an aircraft into Croke Park, over and above the threat that has materialised for this island in both of the last two wars.

If you want to talk about sovereignty, let's talk about our non existent merchant marine, the dwindling numbers of escorts amongst the powers in Europe who can't be at home and across the world at the same time, as well as the simple physics of an aircraft's endurance being measured in hours and a submarine's being measured in months, not to mention their payloads...

Your Commission has called for a "balanced" navy as part of LOA 3.

That's it. That's all they wrote and it's absolute nonsense, and Dohvolle, I wouldn't be surprised if you're one of the retired civil servants that wrote the report, or an existing civil servant that crafted its terms of reference.

So go ahead, stick me on your lengthy ignore list. The risk of harm to you from hijacked civilian airliners is a lot lower if you stick your head in the sand.

I don't see "useless as a squadron of Gripens" anywhere in that...

Such a load of bloomin cafuffle about the suggestion that the country needs 6 to 12 modern jet aircraft. Seems like a given to me....and rather minimal at that. I'd say 16 to 24 fighters and at least one proper airlifted and a new government jet should be the order of the day, and let's have a half dozen light attack helicopters into the bargain.

The bottom line argument for acquiring a Squadron of modern jet fighter/interceptor aircraft is, that another sovereign Country currently performs the tasks of a peace time defensive air force on our behalf and in our airspace.

As a modern wealthy Republic, that should be simply unacceptable to any citizen of this nation who values the Constitutional and Sovereign integrity of that Republic.

Leave aside the rare civilian incidents, the Russian Federation is doing its best to drag all of Europe into a war against it and one of these days it might succeed. We have no military allies and that's fine, its the choice of the People, but the People must recognise that choice comes with consequences.

The western approaches are littered with Russian submarines, warships and long range reconnaissance bombers, looking to probe, distract, test and generally occupy NATO assets. Those games of cat and mouse could turn into a live fight any day and the least that is expected of us as that wealthy Western democracy on the open flank of Europe, is to be able to protect our own back yard. At the moment, we cannot.

The old paradigm which let us live under the passive umbrella of NATO defence, is gone. The age of naivety goes with it.

And its time a couple of posters on here copped themselves on to that.

Since the airport at Galway has been closed for many years (apart from the local flying club), why not take it over as a West Coast base for the AC? They've used it in the past...

My bad if so. I thought it's my quote of that is what you are replying to. I'm too jaded to go back and unravel that.

Galway looks like it has a reasonable amount of infrastructure if the pics on their web page are anything to go by....t'was just a suggestion as it's not at all busy....

Interesting graphics in that link. Thanks