Interesting articles

It could be as little as the Naval Operations Centre being in communication with the 295.

LÉ Aoibhinn was here in the east coast last week, perhaps we've been able to muster up enough crew for 1 x P60 and 1 x P70 also. I mean now that the summer holidays are over and whatnot.

Hope so…anything else and Jonny Russian would have laughed his effing head off!

I'm not sure what they would have added with British and US naval assets already shadowing…. ones with actual guns and stuff

did we take the 76mm of the Joyce when no one was looking? As mentioned shadowing is just that, not actually trying to actively sink the other ship.

seems from RTÉ that one of the ships was involved, must have been Aoibhinn

Prime Time understands an Irish Naval Service vessel was positioned on the edge of the Irish EEZ, and across the closest cables to the Yantar, to deter entry to the EEZ. It is further understood that the Irish vessel 'hailed' the Russian vessel, meaning it contacted and communicated with it.

https://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2024/1115/1481145-russian-spy-ship-confirmed-to-be-operating-off-dublin-near-cables/

Lots and lots of lovely HD footage from the 295, geolocated, showing a known Russian spy ship inside Irish territorial waters, getting up to who knows what, sent to all the World's news channels and outlets

More impactful than any 76mm across the bow.

Both sides, of course. But every audience needs to know about it.

You really think the Irish Audience is paying attention?

Balkans was 30 years ago. Goldeneye was in the cinemas. Dialup internet 1.0 was arriving.

Time to catch up, ace.

"Europe" as we know it today didn't exist back then.

We weren't a people. We were mostly a bunch of disconnected countries going our own ways, unaligned and uncoordinated. Austria, Finland and Sweden only joined the EU that year, there were 15 members of a loosely aligned new concept in its formative stage.

The Americans bailed out Bosnians. Its not on us.

Kaliningrad, Transnistria and outer Mongolia are different topics.

They didn't have any of that at the time. You were attributing responsibility to the EU for something which was happening in non-member countries before the EU properly existed.

Your time frame is out.

I mean first the Ottoman empire and now Ukraine. When is the EU act going to get its act together. Brussels just stood there and let Vienna do all the work.

"At some stage europe will have to step up. We as a european people can not keep hoping the americans will bail us out when trouble happens such as the balkans"

I was responding to that. Its basically blaming someone for an incident which happened before they were on the scene.

In 1995 there was no (proper) EU as we know it today. There was no unified people on the scene, just mostly individual uncoordinated countries.

The Americans bailed out the Bosnians in 95. They didn't bail out a collective Europe. Because a collective Europe didn't really exist back then. Only a partial shadow of the EU consisting of 15 countries with a relatively weak integrity.

Im not taking on some kind of debt by association for what was an affair between the US and whichever Balkan country they assisted.

(Sharing a continent does not associate me with Bosnians any more than Americans have some collective debt with Mexico just because they're both American by continental term)

Bombing Bosnia did not rescue me, or anybody in France, Spain, UK, Greece, Portugal, Germany you name it.

That goes on Bosnias book. And they're not an EU member even today.

Ireland wasn't bailed out.

So whats this shyte about hoping Americans will bail us out again.

Certainly good news, and hopefully as you say it continues. I saw a Facebook post of a recent class graduation from Gormanston with 20 naval recruits passing out, again welcome news for the NS given its state.

However has there been any news on Retention, or are we still bleeding out there?

No, not Ireland necessarily.

We are taking part in the EU PESCO Critical Seabed Infrastructure Protection project. So, assets and resources protecting undersea infrastructure in Irish waters could come from any of the 9 project contributors, including the Navies of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, among others.

Yes indeed, we have expanded our Individually Tailored Partnership Programme with NATO (basically PfP up to now) to partner with the Allied Maritime Command Critical Undersea Infrastructure operational unit at SHAPE, and also separately on Cyber Defence.