Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

About as fast as the FA50 then! Not bad!

Breaks apart at Mach 1.2.

Realistically it will top out at 44% the speed of a Typhoon FGR4.

Making it a beyond hilarious suggestion for air policing and QRA.

just saw that myself now... thanks

Assuming of course that the government loses its case…

I assume apart from being grumpy he will just make it a formal agreement before the Daíl, he’s made it clear spending money on the DF is the last thing the DF needs.

Was that a block by the British government? Can’t see why the manufacturer wouldn’t have wanted some extra sales?

It was an absolutely tiny machine. I sat in one once. T'wasnt like sitting in a cockpit at all, it was more like putting on your jacket! Cheap and cheerful.

Right lads, someone on here knows what the craic with this. https://www.oceanfm.ie/2023/10/12/defence-forces-allays-concerns-after-army-jets-spotted-over-sligo/

This 'news story' about "army jets" is clearly missing so much information and makes zero sense.

Several users on twitter reported "fighter jets" over sligo. It's disappointing that there is a huge fear to acknowledge any sort of cooperation with any "imperialist" nation who might tarnish our "neutrality"(if such a thing exists in 2023) by bringing their "war machines" to our sovereign lands. sigh

It's like Fr Ted.

edit: actually my mind is racing now :) a eurofighter can land in 500-700m. The runway at Strandhill is 1000m long. Hardly doing a touch and go?

Oh man... if journalists and the public identify pc12s as 'fighter jets' with one person on twitter commenting "I thought a plane was coming down"... it doesn't really bode well for actually acquiring jets... People would have a breakdown. lol

Poland are seemingly intent on buying more fighters. The local press is calling for superlative air-air performance and in particular performance capable of counter-air in the face of Sukhoi Su35.

Oddly, the article attached seems to think that capability only exists in 2 current airframes. The f15-EX and the Eurofighter. On a top trumps basis, that does appear true, but? In reality apart from outright speed and ceiling the Rafale and Gripen are also well able for the role and can do it with far greater range thanks to Metor BVR.

One crucial factor to consider for anyone buying airframes to counter Russian aircraft? Is that despite them all being large and hugely visible on radar, they carry missile systems that can likely hit western aircraft outside of current max AIM120 range, well at least 120C.

R37 is now carried by Su35 as well as the MiG31, its very long range is a threat. A bigger threat is the R77 which outranges most common AIM120 versions. Meaning Western fighters would have to enter well within Russian missile range to fire anything below an AIM120-C8.

Now the reason I write about this on the "Fighter jets for Ireland Thread", is that as more and more western countries reassess their own defence needs? There will be a tighter than ever supply of new and 2nd hand airframes for Ireland to consider.

The current supply of F16-MLU that were becoming available as NATO members moved to new airframes? Well between Ukraine and the recently arranged deal for Argentina to take over 24 Danish F16s means years are again being added to any possible Irish acquisitions.

True that there are no plans even apparently long term for Irish acquisitions. I see no issue though in highlighting both the changes in aircraft availability due to a dramatic change in geopolitical circumstances and the rapidly diminishing supply of even 2nd airframes.

Not to rehash the conversation that was had after the publication of the commission report, but I'm sure most of us regular (ish) posters on this sub-forum would agree that the report itself became outdated as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine. We are no longer in a world where saying LOA2 is acceptable as a realistic defence posture.

The UK has a small but high end Air combat capability that is far too small for them to be able to support high tempo, high threat operations in face of a near peer adversary. We have to accept that as NATO and UK in particular refocus on threats in the East, that the UK's capacity and indeed willingness to fly Typhoons along with the necessary tankers out west to police Ireland's air defence/policing gap is decreasing.

RAF is now smaller than France, Germany, Italy and approaching parity with Spain, those Services are all actively expanding whilst the RAF is still cutting. Their F35 joint force that was planned as 138 aircraft? May yet stall out at 72. Where other countries have committed to more Eurofighters, Spain & Italy, the RAF is still not even committed to a like for like replacement of their retired tranche 1s.

We in Ireland are in the unenviable position of relying solely on the RAF to pick up our slack, when the RAF is running out of capacity to ensure it can manage its current commitments at home and overseas.

When you outsource security you leave yourself vulnerable to other peoples own failings....and with no way to fix those yourself.

Considering European NATO members have just committed even more airborne patrol squadrons of all types to the Baltic and tankerage to support them, I'd have serious doubts about that.

They have had units in Eastern Europe operating almost to a wartime level of operations or nearly two years now. We know that these tankers are relatively few and many quite old.

My point is, when are some of these scarce and aged assets going to have to be withdrawn for major overhaul and where is the capacity coming from to replace them?

My theory is, that the Western European coast is not nearly as well protected, in depth, as NATO might like.