Ireland - lack of air and naval defence.

goldie fish · 03-03-2011 07:51PM

BrianD wrote: »

People don't get it. Our need for naval, airforce and a standing army a mimimal. We don't actually need them.

The last occupying force we evicted through guerilla warfare and negotiation.

We escaped the first, second and cold wars with no material damage to the country.

The biggest current threats to a national such as Ireland are nuclear attack and terrorism. We can't counter either through having a large army. The US faces nuclear anhilation at the touch of a button and their large and sophisticated air defences were easily bypassed on 9/11.

Why should we have an army? The only reason is aid to civil power and contribution to multinational forces.

As for a navy what we need is a bigger coast guard and fisheries protection fleet.

Air Corp - no fighters required. Just appropriate transport aircraft.

Where do you live? It sounds lovely. I'd like to visit somewhere.

Cos it sure as hell isn't ireland.

Manic Moran · 06-03-2011 02:02AM

BrianD wrote: »

The last occupying force we evicted through guerilla warfare and negotiation.

After, what, 700 years?

We escaped the first, second and cold wars with no material damage to the country.

So did the US, I do believe.

The US faces nuclear anhilation at the touch of a button and their large and sophisticated air defences were easily bypassed on 9/11.

True. I doubt they'll make the same mistake twice, though.

The only reason is aid to civil power and contribution to multinational forces.

They seem like good reasons to start with.

As for a navy what we need is a bigger coast guard and fisheries protection fleet.

Definitely true. Though some true naval capability might be nice. ASW, anyone?

Air Corp - no fighters required. Just appropriate transport aircraft.

That one I'll disagree with. The nation should have the capability of policing its own airspace.

NTM

seanaway · 20-03-2011 04:55PM

I can't claim to have read all the posts on this thread so forgive if I repeat any already made.

1. It seems those who bemoan defence expenditure are the same who expect others who have spent massive quantities of money on it to step in and save Ireland should it be needed.
2. Ireland may have escaped severe damage during WW2 but that is thanks in the main to the UK/USA and others saving our freedom.
3. Ireland's 'neutrality' in WW2 was not a strategic decision based on ability to defend or otherwise. It was a decision taken by a bitter man with deep seated anti-British feelings. The same man who used his US citizenship to save his own ass after 1916.
4. Nazi Germany wanted to eliminate all Irish people in the concentration camps as 'gypsies' and turn Ireland into the farm for the Third Reich. Think we might have had a chance if Britain hadn't faced him down?
5. Ireland didn't become a 'farm'. See point 2 above.
6. Irish territorial waters are daily used by NATO submarines and there is NOTHING we can do to stop them as we can't even locate them!
7. The world is a changed place. Ireland likes to claim neutrality but fails to ensure it can defend this neutrality. During the cold war Sweden had the third largest air force in the world - and no one could call Sweden a warmongering country. (Unless you want to go back to the Vikings!)
8. Neutrality is only respected by democratic states. Ask the Norwegians how their neutrality helped them when Hitler wanted hard water for his atomic bomb project.
9. It's time for Ireland to quit sitting on the fence. Have a referendum on joining NATO. If we vote 'NO' then disband the armed forces and pray we never need them. At least we can spend the money on peaceful projects. If we vote 'YES' then a lot of the funding will come from other NATO states anyway. Do you think Portugal with 9 million people could afford its armed forces without support? (45,00 active service personnel Vs 10,000 in Ireland - or 1.6% of GDP Vs 0.7%)
10. The men and women of the defence forces deserve to have the best - whether this is on land, sea, or in the air. They should not have to 'make do'. Give them the tools or close the factory.

Seanbass · 21-03-2011 07:18AM

jesus,that was some reading lads, at least It kept me occupied for the night :rolleyes:
just have to say though. While I agree we have no apparent need for a well funded army and a decent AC/Navy I have to agree with manic moran and seanaway.

As a modern and sovereign nation we should be able to

1)adequately police its own airspace.

2)put up more than a token resistance in defence of our sovereign territory should the need require (irregardless of the threat or probability).

3)be able to adequately patrol and police our territorial waters.

and all the above without the expectation of intervention by another nation to put their own countrymen and money on the line to help us.
why should they when we're too lazy to do it for ourselves or even attempt to do so.

Do the people that oppose the argument for all these things not feel ashamed at having such a half assed country?

I personally think it is embarrassing in the extreme to be asking Britain to police our airspace for us. A country we not so long ago won our independence from,never mind bank deals and what not from europe because we cannot even handle our own finances properly as a nation.

If that's the attitude sure we may aswell give the country back to the brits because they did such a good job of looking after us and it's too much hassle trying to sort it out for ourselves.
why did we bother fighting for our freedom and setting up the Defence forces if we're just going to ask Britain or France to babysit us in case something happened,We may aswell have stayed in the union as much as it would pain me to say it.
at least we'd have decent roads too :P

Avgas · 21-03-2011 10:32AM

seanaway wrote: »

10. The men and women of the defence forces deserve to have the best - whether this is on land, sea, or in the air. They should not have to 'make do'. Give them the tools or close the factory.

This is the famous 'all or nothing' philosophy. So either we build our own fleet of aircraft carriers and buy F22s…..or we leave all our security needs to a few armed Gardai driving Volvos with PDWs in the boot…….emmmmm….doesn't that sound like a tad extreme and unrealistic….?

You raise some valid frustrations but 'NATO or nothing' is not a sensible way to shape our very limited and hard choices which the drafters of the new White Paper on Defence 2011-2020 will have to do.

omg a kitty · 21-03-2011 08:14PM

Guys you might consider this a bit off topic, but
How much does the government pay every year for a person on the dole?
And
How much does the government pay every year for a soldier(or whatever you wanna call the people in the Irish Army now)?

Seriously...

concussion · 21-03-2011 09:10PM

http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.military.ie

I'd reccommend not joining the DF if that's your attitude.

omg a kitty · 21-03-2011 09:34PM

concussion wrote: »

http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Pages/default.aspx
http://www.military.ie

I'd reccommend not joining the DF if that's your attitude.

no no im saying, employ more people into the army

concussion · 21-03-2011 09:45PM

Sure, if you secure a larger budget and more taskings. You're looking at an 10 to 15 k per person to give them a job which isn't really required. Even in the good years the DF topped out at 10,500 personnell, it's currentlly just under 10,000.

omg a kitty · 21-03-2011 10:09PM

Wouldnt they be required if we decide to join nato?(which probably will never happen)

OS119 · 21-03-2011 11:10PM

omg a kitty wrote: »

Wouldnt they be required if we decide to join nato?(which probably will never happen)

no, Iceland is a member of NATO, and Iceland doesn't have an Army.

roundymac · 22-03-2011 12:07PM

Iceland dos'nt need an army, it's strategic north atlantic position is enough, any way it would not have the population for a standing army.

DublinWriter · 22-03-2011 12:11PM

seanaway wrote: »

3. Ireland's 'neutrality' in WW2 was not a strategic decision based on ability to defend or otherwise. It was a decision taken by a bitter man with deep seated anti-British feelings. The same man who used his US citizenship to save his own ass after 1916.

Common folk-myth - Dev never played the US Citizen card to ensure escaping the firing squad.

roundymac · 22-03-2011 12:17PM

DublinWriter wrote: »

Common folk-myth - Dev never played the US Citizen card to ensure escaping the firing squad.

It certainly helped, how much he used it is open to question. My personal view is the brits did us a diservice by not shooting him. We ended up with one of the most devisive individuals after proply Cromwell influenceing this country for nearly a century.:mad:

groundshaker · 22-03-2011 12:55PM

(Quote, from Seanaway)'4. Nazi Germany wanted to eliminate all Irish people in the concentration camps as 'gypsies' and turn Ireland into the farm for the Third Reich. Think we might have had a chance if Britain hadn't faced him down'(Quote)

Seanaway, could you please explain this comment, as in all my reading about WW2 and Nazi Germany, I've never come across any reference to Nazi Germany wanting to systematically target the Irish People for elmination.
I'm not asking this in response to the general debate that is occuring on this forum, just that I am highly dubious about that statement.

roundymac · 22-03-2011 05:09PM

I'm with seanaway on this one groundbreaker. It's in files that are now being read, plus there is film which I have seen on various tv channels where Hitler is addressing his followers, he is listing out the countries he intends to conquer, lists about every country in the European and Arabian zones, Ireland is one of those mentioned. I also came across in some sunday paper lately where it shows that the nazi's knew exactly how many jews there was in Ireland, it was about 4,500 and that these would be murdered when they took control. The reason why you never heard of it groundbreaker most likely is we did'nt cover ourselves in glory in WW2 especially when news of the death camps started to unfold, Dev signing the book of condolence, and stories of Dan Breen the freedom fighter from the wars of independence and the civil war weeping uncontrolably on the news of Hitlers death.

groundshaker · 22-03-2011 06:05PM

I think you've misunderstood the point I was trying to make Roundymac, I am aware of the Nazi plan to invade Ireland, the so called Operation Green. The point I was trying to make is that, I have never seen a reference to the Nazis wanting to completely eliminate the Irish people in concentration camps, as was the claim made by seanaway.

roundymac · 22-03-2011 09:29PM

Yeah, sorry about that, but I do know that they had a list of Irish jews.

groundshaker · 23-03-2011 06:47PM

No problem mate!

stockyboie · 11-04-2011 12:27PM

NITransport wrote: »

In all honesty, I don't think Ireland needs to worry about personal protection. If anything happened to us, do you think any American Government would stand by and just observe... no. Love it or loath it, Americans think they're Irish, and if their Government didn't react, they would be booted out.

Also the amount of FDI here from America would also be a reason for the US to get involved.

I do think though, as we have the largest territorial sea to patrol as part of our EU duties, we should have a better Naval Service, more Helicopters to fly from the ships at sea.

Finally, in this modern age of international terrorism, we should have an air corp thats able to react to inflight emergencies. Doesn't need to be a vast about. Circa 10 just to response to an emergency on our side of the Atlantic Sea, or an aircraft in our airspace heading for Europe. It'd be nice to have a couple of Typhoons or the new JSF. Anything instead of a couple of Cessna's with machine guns attached!

NT

This thread is going way off topic. Time to bring it back on topic.

I'm not sure 'americans think theyre irish' I think the demographics of the usa are changing rapidly. Most of americas immigration is now from latin countries especially mexico so the old irish american link is being weakened by the day. I think that relying on another country to provide defence for us is just a plain lazy irish attitude that has seen our defence forces remain comparable to a third world nation in terms of resources. I think if your relying on 'americans thinking they're irish' as part of your defence policy you really need to have a rethink about it.

If we look at some stats we find that we have the smallest air wing in europe, the smallest navy and one of the smallest armies in terms of numbers. We don't have much equipment when comparable to other european nations of similar size e.g switzerland, norway, finland, denmark, belgium, sweden and all our equipment is purchased abroad and not manufactured locally. All these other countries have capable air defence networks and larger armies and much more resources in terms of vehicle numbers and types of vehicles. The economy argument goes out the window because these countries have similar sized economies to our own. They also manufacture their own military products. I believe we have one company based here.

We haven't got any heavy armoured fighting vehicles only light infrantry platforms at best. Our navy is seriously underresourced given the fact we are an island nation and the first entry point to europe between the usa. Even if we base our navy on a drug interdiction & fisheries protection service 8 ships is just too low to patrol a coastlinethe size of ours.

I think that successive governments and their lack of investment in them military and the irish public in general not seeing it as important are the main reason why we remain in this state. They may be right in this regard but then again with the earths natural resources being dwindled away and populations increasing there is going to be conflict in future generations over resources such as water food land etc. I think its important we do have some sort of air defence even if it is limited. Others may disagree and im sure they will but the fact is defence of our nation in terms of the military has been neglected altogether. We don't have any proper air defence capable of meeting 21st century threats and there is no point pretending we do as some posters here seem to be trying to do.

Just go to the defence forces website and see a learjet listed as part of our 'air corps'. Just embarrasing really. From what i''ve experienced the the irish attitude is bascially if it aint broke don't fix it.. the pc-9 being the perfect example. When the plane crashed they never had any planning for attrition rates so they never replaced it.

The irish defence forces are structured around peace keeping operations and providing aid in civil emergencies. Air ambulance operations or carting politicans around for example should not be carried out by the army using army based helicopters. We should have a decided civillian run air ambulance service for that. The coastgaurd provides for the rest.

Basically i think that you can't call yourself a defence force if you can't defend your own airspace. They should call themselves irish peacekeeping force. The japanese call theirs self defence force but they actually have the capablity to defend their country we don't.

If we are to become serious about our defence we need to acquire some jet fighters. Simple as that no excuses. We need 8-10 of these. Eurofighter the preferred option. In terms of navy we could increase the size to 10 - 12 ships if we wanted to. The armies size can stay the same as there is no need to increase it but they do need some heavy lift helicopters and 1 -2 transport aircraft for peacekeeping operations. There has to be seperation between defence of our country which we currently as it stands cannot do and maintaining our role as mainly a peacekeeping force. I think many people have a problem in understanding that both can be done without overmilitarisation or even conflicting our current 'neutral' status. This is about how we percieve ourselves not about how others percieve us.

In terms of helicopters the aw139 is basically a civillian helicopter painted green used for an air ambulance service. Hasn't got sand filters or any type armour on it so it can't even be deployed anywhere abroad in support of peacekeeping operations. Thats about it nothing major and even at that its still not a proper defence but still an improvement on what we have.

The current situation is intangible and has to end. We need to get serious about our defence and
stop with the excuses. Its like a worn out record now.

Rougebladez · 29-04-2011 08:59PM

If the country was given 2 hours notice of a hijacked airliner being used to crash into a building anywhere other than Dublin the defence forces would be hard pushed to stop them.

The Naval Service chances of being in an area to intercept would be slim considering the amount of sea area to be covered with the amount of ships they have even though they have the weapon capabilities.

The Air Corps dont have the aircraft to keep up with an airliner never mind the aircraft weaponry to take it down. Could be wrong but i dont think they have Air to Air missiles.

The Army, even though they have Surface to air capabilities, would be hard pushed to deploy them in time.
there

So the one part of the PDF there to protect our airspace is the one least capable.
Even old Soviet fighters from the cold war would be more capable than what we have at the moment.

OS119 · 29-04-2011 09:24PM

Rougebladez wrote: »

...Even old Soviet fighters from the cold war would be more capable than what we have at the moment.

the unpalatable truth is that a Hurricane Fighter from 1940 is more capable than what Ireland has now.

the problem is not really that Ireland doesn't have any kind of AD capability, its that, by and large, its politicians have been allowed to spin a tale that suggests that Ireland does have a rudimentary (read: 'good enough') air defence capability, and no one has challenged that for the falacy that it is.

punchdrunk · 29-04-2011 09:31PM

Rougebladez wrote: »

If the country was given 2 hours notice of a hijacked airliner being used to crash into a building anywhere other than Dublin the defence forces would be hard pushed to stop them.

They wouldn't have a snowballs in defending Dublin either,we have no permanent missile defenses and the ones we do have are very short range mobile systems with very limited ability to hit anything that would be at the altitude an airliner would be operating at

Rougebladez wrote: »

The Naval Service chances of being in an area to intercept would be slim considering the amount of sea area to be covered with the amount of ships they have even though they have the weapon capabilities.

the Naval service have no hardware able to take out aircraft at any kind of speed/altitude great than say,a helicopter

Rougebladez wrote: »

The Air Corps dont have the aircraft to keep up with an airliner never mind the aircraft weaponry to take it down. Could be wrong but i dont think they have Air to Air missiles.

no air to air missile capability or aircraft with radar/target acquisition /guidance systems suitable for A2A engagement anyway

Rougebladez wrote: »

So the one part of the PDF there to protect our airspace is the one least capable.
Even old Soviet fighters from the cold war would be more capable than what we have at the moment.

couldn't agree more,I wonder what the pilots of these would make of the current state of affairs??

(we had 20 of these during WWII)

Rougebladez · 29-04-2011 10:18PM

Sorry Punchdrunk but

the Naval service have no hardware able to take out aircraft at any kind of speed/altitude great than say,a helicopter

the Oto Melara and Bofor system on the Etna have AA capabilities.

You can check it out in Janes Fighting Ships.

punchdrunk · 29-04-2011 10:23PM

Rougebladez wrote: »

Sorry Punchdrunk but

the Oto Melara and Bofor system on the Etna have AA capabilities.

You can check it out in Janes Fighting Ships.

WWII era naval AA gun capability VS potentially a 900km per hour passenger Plane (lets not even mention a genuine military threat),I'll sleep soundly tonight so...

Kadongy · 29-04-2011 10:24PM

There is no need to. We are an ideal base for attacking Britain, and to a lesser extent some continental countries. Britain would not be able to risk us being occupied by hostile forces and would defend any attack; immediately counter any invasion. This is the reason why our sovereignty has never been threatened by military means since the Republic of Ireland was formed.

This is also the reason why they considered it important to keep us occupied historically.

[Now I look forward to being flamed by close-minded militant Republicans.]

punchdrunk · 29-04-2011 10:31PM

Kadongy wrote: »

There is no need to. We are an ideal base for attacking Britain, and to a lesser extent some continental countries. Britain would not be able to risk us being occupied by hostile forces and would defend any attack; immediately counter any invasion. This is the reason why our sovereignty has never been threatened by military means since the Republic of Ireland was formed.

This is also the reason why they considered it important to keep us occupied historically.

[Now I look forward to being flamed by close-minded militant Republicans.]

with the current state of the UK's budget cuts in air defenses I wouldn't be too happy relying on them to do the job for us,it's no excuse for our own complacency.we should have some small form of defense in addition to the ability to fall back on the RAF to back us up if needed

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/175078.html
what of something happens and there's no typhoons available on the west coast of the UK? there's precious little time to react to a situation without having to wait on jets to get here from Scotland

Rougebladez · 29-04-2011 10:38PM

Punchdrunk.

The Oto Melara is currently being used by most major navies at the moment and the Bofors i'm referring to is the Bofors 57mm which is used by some modern navies and NOT the 40mm which is the one you are referring to.

punchdrunk · 29-04-2011 10:50PM

Rougebladez wrote: »

Punchdrunk.

The Oto Melara is currently being used by most major navies at the moment and the Bofors i'm referring to is the Bofors 57mm which is used by some modern navies and NOT the 40mm which is the one you are referring to.

I know we don't use the WWII era pom pom's I was joking
my point stands though,at a push they will work as AA defense of the ship but fúck all use as a real deterrent in a genuine attack on the country itself

Steyr · 29-04-2011 11:27PM

punchdrunk wrote: »

there's precious little time to react to a situation without having to wait on jets to get here from Scotland

Well they are slightly closer with Typhoon F2's at RAF Coningsby. An RAF Typhoon's standard QRA fit is 2x200 gallon (1,000 litre) supersonic fuel tanks, 4xAIM-120 AMRAAM and 4xAIM-132 ASRAAM.

Ireland - lack of air and naval defence.

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