Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

Sorry on my phone with shite service. But you aren’t wrong, I mean SFs whole platform is full of empty promises.

Nah, the bad news is that people actually believe them and think some how anything will massively change when they are in power.

You never know, maybe its finally sunk into the heads of some of the TD's that the world just might be getting a bit more unstable? I mean its a low probability event but maybe?

True enough, though I don't think anyone would complain if they played the card of refusing 2% but accepting 1% (for example), that's would still be a huge boost. And in relation to SF, wonder what Matt and the Ambassador might have discussed?

https://twitter.com/vincentguerend/status/1661463104872493057

1% would be a serious amount for a country like Ireland. I can’t ever see it happening though.

The whole fixation on 2%, that began with NATO, is a red herring and a redundant argument from the off.

It's completely arbitrary and bears no regard to the differing needs and geography of different members.

I've been a project director in my profession for 15 years and for 10 before that at junior levels and you do not begin a project with 'whatever we do it's got to cost a minimum of 2% of revenues'.

What should be done, in Ireland as much as anywhere else (and in a general sense the Commission has done it) is to carry out an entire strategic assessment of the Alliance, locally, regionally, globally with allies and determine the gross sizes of the fighting forces and support services in totality to protect everybody's collective interests and then break it down into strengths, capacity, resources etc etc.

In short, how can Norway and Albania each spending 2% of GDP be comparable contributions?

Interesting.

I read somewhere a while ago that just before the war we actually had an order for a squadron of hurricanes or spitfires? Can’t remember which, begs the question though what if we had gotten them?

I thought the AC had a bomber squadron as well?

I totally agree with you on how quickly things moved in aviation at that time, generations were measured almost in years really. The Gladiator was in hindsight a mistake Gloster had put forward a monoplane design as well which would have been far better for the RAF and RN but to be fair it’s not the only missed opportunity for the U.K.

The Anson served on as you said but for us it was always a strange one imo, not really capable as a bomber or endurance for MPA and like everything not enough of them.

As I said it was the “step down” we took when it was decided that it wasn’t politically acceptable to work with the Air Ministry to purchase Hurricanes, but deliveries were suspended when the war started and we stayed neutral. Like everything defence related it was far too late by the time Dev and the cabinet actually grasped how bad the situation was in Europe and how likely a war was, simple measures taken a few years beforehand would have left us in a much better position… somethings never change I guess…

As I’ve said before realistically it was barely better than where we are now and never able to manage even control over Casement against anything.

We had diplomats in the major capitals though, it should have been easy for them to see the rising chances of conflict given the significant upswing in defence spending alone, even if you discount the Appeasement Policies and the fact that our representative in Berlin was a big fan of Hitler. In reality given our connections with the UK it should have been easy to see that "something bad" was increasingly going to happen, and how utterly bare ass naked we were, at the very least after the Treaty Ports were returned a Navy should have been started then (as the Free State put forward in the late 1920's Naval Talks with the UK), I mean I've often wondered with the UK industry ramping up so much so fast from 1936 onwards, why some Irish firms didn't try and get some of the business?

As for the States, their position was more complex, as was their position on Dev's choice to stay neutral, not sure you can claim they were still backing neutrality until Japan's attack either given their actions in the North Atlantic by then either.

We are so lucky that the below could never happen in Irish Air Space