Terror Attack on Ireland.

Sparks

Mick86 wrote:

The US, UK and Israeli Embassies I suppose are the obvious ones.

Hence the ARW.

Next up would be US planes and troops in Shannon.

Easily and cheaply defended by routing them somewhere outside Ireland. Which I understand they're now doing.

Personally if I were a terrorist, I'd fire a SAM at a US transport taking off or landing at Shannon. Failing that a mortar attack on the departure lounge or a plane on the runway. With a bit of planning you could be back in Tehran before the smoke clears.

Doubtful. More likely the Ryanair flight to Tehran would land in Tel Aviv and try to connect via a bus service...

BossArky

Maskhadov wrote:

Its high time we went and bought 22 Eurofighters and invest in a proper military base in Shannon

Can you seriously get fighters for 22 euro?

Why do you say 22?

What do you think would be a prime target? Rock of Cashel? O'Connel Bridge? Croke Park on All Ireland Final day?

Mick86

Sparks wrote:

Hence the ARW.

Can't see them stopping a hijacked plane being flown into the US embassy. The best defence against that is the airport police detecting and arresting the hijackers before they board the plane.

Sparks wrote:

Easily and cheaply defended by routing them somewhere outside Ireland. Which I understand they're now doing.

Ah, the Irish solution to an Irish problem. Let someone else handle it.

flogen

Mick86 wrote:

Ah, the Irish solution to an Irish problem. Let someone else handle it.

As a neutral state that is supposed to abide by international law, I don't think such an Irish solution in this instance would be the wrong one.

Sparks

Mick86 wrote:

Can't see them stopping a hijacked plane being flown into the US embassy. The best defence against that is the airport police detecting and arresting the hijackers before they board the plane.

Their role isn't to defend against planes hitting embassies, but terrorists attacking them through other means.

Maskhadov

What I want to know is... where will all the people be who are saying we dont need fighter jets if something terrible happens.

Its all very well saying we dont need jets and a comprehensive security plan. But if something were to happen then these people would be no where to be seen. It would be pointless launching an investigation into the tradegy.

I have read that the fact of the matter is that we are relying on England to provide us with air cover. If we didnt need that we wouldnt have asked them. I think its an excellent point thats overlooked.

therecklessone

Maskhadov wrote:

What I want to know is... where will all the people be who are saying we dont need fighter jets if something terrible happens.

And when we've wasted €2 billion on your shiny toys, where will you be when someone detonates a bomb on a packed LUAS at the Red Cow or on a Ryanair flight somewhere over the Irish Sea?

See? Two can play at that game...

Victor

BossArky wrote:

Can you seriously get fighters for 22 euro?

Thats the single market working for you.

Diogenes

Maskhadov wrote:

What I want to know is... where will all the people be who are saying we dont need fighter jets if something terrible happens.

Yeah and while we're at it I think we all need

A) Personal Giant Asteroid shelters.

Dog and killer bee repellant. Incase Al Qaeida attack us with dogs with killer bees in their mouth, and when they bite you they sting......

Its all very well saying we dont need jets and a comprehensive security plan. But if something were to happen then these people would be no where to be seen. It would be pointless launching an investigation into the tradegy.

Again you're sounding like a tired old record now, the "ye laugh at me now....." Look tell you what lets split into imaginary parrallel universes you get the world where we spend the better chunk of €8 billion on fighter jets that do f*ck all for a decade. I get to spend my time were the €8 billion gets spent on health, education and infrastructure. I know which Ireland I want to be in.

I have read that the fact of the matter is that we are relying on England to provide us with air cover. If we didnt need that we wouldnt have asked them. I think its an excellent point thats overlooked.

I think it's an insipid point thats out of context. Did you look at the risk assessment of how likely such a scenario would occur? Balance it off to the cost to the taxpayer.

Finally Maskadhov, could you explain a situation where fighter jets are remotely useful? Plane gets hijacked out of dublin airport, supposing even if you could scramble a couple of jets out of baldonnel, you're faced with letting it crash into its target or shoot it down and rain hot metal and shrapnel over a large portion of north dublin. Either way the death toil is horrific.

The recklessone posted some great stats about response times earlier in this thread, even if a plane got hijacked out of cork or shannon, by the time it was intercepted it would at least be over the outskirts of dublin, and, Bertie would have to give an immediate "take it down order" for it to effective. We've seen how badly chain of commands work in this situation. What if they didnt give the order fast enough? Or Worse too fast, and accidently shot down a passenger jet with communications problems.

I'm afraid you're going to have to answer, at least some of the direct issues raised about your argument before you can try to descend to appealing to the base fears of "where will all the people be who are saying we dont need fighter jets if something terrible happens. " Lots of people are making credible points about how jets aren't an effective weapon aganist terrorists, you've not made a credible argument that they are.

Diogenes

Victor wrote:

Thats teh single market working for you.

Course it's only €15 in Portugal, and you can get a cheap knock off version in Morocco for a fiver, though the rivetting's terrible, comes apart after a few washes.

zynaps

DaveMcG wrote:

Hear hear. We aren't under attack, there is no need to buy new toys.

Yep.

Besides, just because 'other' countries want to waste their money coming up with ridiculous tactics to combat too-specific threats, doesn't mean we need to follow suit. It's a trade-off between perceived security and complete unusability (eg: the Brits doing exactly what "terrorists" want by doing stupid things in their airports at the moment - in fact, in a way their mission succeeded without them ever taking off; they prompted the Brits to waste millions of quid in their usual knee-jerk overreaction for nowt, and cost foreign businesses like Ryanair a bomb too).

If you blow a couple of billion trying to catch people blowing up planes with liquid explosives, or putting marshals on planes with a quota they have to point the finger at innocents to meet, so-called terrorists will just switch tactics and blow up a shopping centre, or poison a water supply, or sabotage power grids.

Rather than focusing on one specific possibility, these chumps should be spending their time and money increasing intelligence, training and such.

Remember after the underground bombings in London, they were looking into installing some kind of AI-based "suspiciousness recognition system", or something? As if they were going to go and attack exactly the same place straight away, the same way. No, easier to just let them waste money, murder a Brazilian and inconvenience their populace.

mick86 wrote:

The US, UK and Israeli Embassies I suppose are the obvious ones.

Err, and every other country with embassies in it? Why would they attack those countries, just to make more enemies?

mick86 wrote:

Personally if I were a terrorist, I'd fire a SAM at a US transport taking off or landing at Shannon. Failing that a mortar attack on the departure lounge or a plane on the runway.

Again, why? Why the focus on airports? How are you going to get a mortar, transport it, set it up, fire it and get away with it without being caught at step 1? And what's the point - you'd basically be sacrificing the rest of your life to kill between 0 and like... 5 people.

These scenarios just seem ridiculous. It'd be much easier for them to carry out an effective attack and get away with it, without focusing on this sort of pointless Die Hard style stuff.

Pointless FUD.

DublinWriter

zynaps wrote:

Again, why? Why the focus on airports? How are you going to get a mortar, transport it, set it up, fire it and get away with it without being caught at step 1? And what's the point - you'd basically be sacrificing the rest of your life to kill between 0 and like... 5 people.

These scenarios just seem ridiculous.

Just exactly how old are you, and more to the point, you obviously don't remember the mortor-bomb campaigns the IRA carried out on Heathrow and Downing Street not so long ago.

luckat

Oh, damn, I'd forgotten about the killer bee secret weapon. Now I won't sleep, you bastard.

lostexpectation

remember that canadian terror bomb plot, well it turns out that it was instigated by the local islamic fundamentalist nutter who turned out to be a police informant who arranged the training camp and the purchase of explosives (that it was actually impossible to buy in canada)...

police selling police bombs for terror coming to a county near you (again).

zynaps

DublinWriter wrote:

Just exactly how old are you

That's a pretty childish question.

DublinWriter wrote:

and more to the point, you obviously don't remember the mortor-bomb campaigns the IRA carried out on Heathrow and Downing Street not so long ago.

Although I don't remember the 1989 Downing St attack, being 7 at the time (maybe that tells you something clever), I do remember hearing about the Heathrow attack (and some kind of rocket attack at the SIS at Vauxhall Cross or whatever later?).

From what googling tells me, no one was injured, though, so I still don't think it would be a very effective attack, although I take your point about it being possible to carry it out. Or at least it was in 1994 - who knows with the amount of CCTV cameras on London's streets these days. However... I stand by my assertion that there are much easier and more effective forms of attack than trying to hit airports with mortars.

oscarBravo

zynaps wrote:

That's a pretty childish question.

It is, but I'd rather you'd reported the post than rise to it. DublinWriter, behave.

luckat, remember that the Internet lacks context, and a witty remark can be taken up all wrong.

InFront

Maskhadov wrote:

What I want to know is... where will all the people be who are saying we dont need fighter jets if something terrible happens.

I have read that the fact of the matter is that we are relying on England to provide us with air cover. If we didnt need that we wouldnt have asked them. I think its an excellent point thats overlooked.

The excellent point that you are overlooking, and that has been made repeatedly, is the inability of military aircraft to divert a tragedy from happening.

If a hijacking did occur here, I for one would be asking how they got a weapon or a bomb on board - not asking why the army didnt shoot down a cuple of hundred innocent people, many of them Irishmen.

TempestSabre

InFront wrote:

...cuple of hundred innocent people, many of them Irishmen.

Why does it make a difference if they are Irishmen?

Victor

TempestSabre wrote:

Why does it make a difference if they are Irishmen?

The 'local interest' angle for the papers.

gilroyb

Maskhadov wrote:

What I want to know is... where will all the people be who are saying we dont need fighter jets if something terrible happens.

Indeed. What's a public interest funeral without fighter jets to fly over head.

On topic, people still haven't identified a target that would be protected by these jets as opposed to ground based defenses.

SeanW

flogen wrote:

As a neutral state that is supposed to abide by international law, I don't think such an Irish solution in this instance would be the wrong one.

Only problem is that our "neutrality" has absolutely no backing whatsoever, neutrality requires self-sufficiency of armed forces to be true, effective and enforceable. IF we were attacked tomorrow, we'd need backup from our allies.

So it makes sense to let the planes stop at Shannon. If we want to kick the US Army out of there, then we should make sure we're never going to NEED the US Army ...

TempestSabre

Victor wrote:

The 'local interest' angle for the papers.

Didn't realise InFront was a reporter...:)

Hobbes

SeanW wrote:

So it makes sense to let the planes stop at Shannon. If we want to kick the US Army out of there, then we should make sure we're never going to NEED the US Army ...

I asked this earlier but seems to be ignored. I'll ask again.

Who do you think will plan on invading us that the US will actually step in and help?

Letting the planes stop is more likely to bring US enemies to Ireland then the other way around.

SeanW

Who'd want to attack us? How many crazies are there in the world today leading 3rd world ****holes (some with nukes)?

Remember that to a person with no education, and/or religious fanatics, "The West," "infidels" are more of a large conceptual enemy, and national borders and idelogical alignments might sometimes be an academic distinction.

If any of these crazies wanted to get a foothold into Europe, Ireland might be a good place to start given our virtually nonexistant military.

And as for why the U.S. would get involved, well, virtually every other American household name company has major interests in Ireland, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Intel (heavily invested here) Proctor and Gamble, CocaCola etc.

None of these companies would be very happy if some nutter moved in and took over here = US response.

InFront

I'm not any sort of reporter, I'm just a 'concerned citizen'.:)

TempestSabre wrote:

Why does it make a difference if they are Irishmen?

No difference - it's ironic that it would be an Irish plane bringing down a plane of so many Irish people.
It's just my absurd humour I suppose, in imagining one of us finding ourselves on that aeroplane that to be shot down by the Irish military as we nervously clasp our passports.

Hobbes

SeanW wrote:

Who'd want to attack us? How many crazies are there in the world today leading 3rd world ****holes (some with nukes)?...

All you have given me is the usual proproganda speel. How about some actual facts.

Iran? Syria? Will they attack us? Is AQ intent on taking over Ireland?

Some actual facts rather then the usual scaremongering.

InFront

SeanW wrote:

And as for why the U.S. would get involved, well, virtually every other American household name company has major interests in Ireland, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Intel (heavily invested here) Proctor and Gamble, CocaCola etc.

None of these companies would be very happy if some nutter moved in and took over here = US response.

Took over? Like a coup coming up Kildare Street???

Look, most American industry - like industry anywhere - performs better in a time of peace and security. Particularly the likes of Dell and Microsoft and Intel, and the pharma companies.
Why on earth would they have political motives to even want the aeroplanes to land here? They're not interested in patriotism, they think economically and keeping the state as low-key and peaceful as possible - that suits their needs. I think you're overestimating the power of Intel Ireland if you think it can alter US foreign policy.

TempestSabre

SeanW wrote:

Who'd want to attack us? How many crazies are there in the world today leading 3rd world ****holes (some with nukes)?...

...If any of these crazies wanted to get a foothold into Europe, Ireland might be a good place to start given our virtually nonexistant military.....

...None of these companies would be very happy if some nutter moved in and took over here = US response.

Exactly how would air defence stop any of that from happening?

Diogenes

DublinWriter wrote:

Just exactly how old are you, and more to the point, you obviously don't remember the mortor-bomb campaigns the IRA carried out on Heathrow and Downing Street not so long ago.

That was possibly the IRA's smartest move, by the end they didn't need to even fire the motars just threaten to and they shut down an international transport hub, costing the British millions

Thats not the goals or tactics of Al Qaeida though, and it still isn't justification for the increased cost of defence. The pro increased budget for security/airforce still haven't offered tangible evidence that

A) That we're not spending enough at the moment to prevent terrorist threats

That what they're proposing will be an effective detterant.

Finally to SeanW's point what are you suggesting that there's going to be a land and sea invasion of Ireland, by er Iran? the Taliban are going to open up a second front in Afganistain by doubling back and invading Ireland? Do you really think anyone's going to just willingly accept that, or er is even remotely credible? Thats just some delusional fantasy.

SeanW

No. At the moment, the chances of Ireland having a land invasion or nuclear attack are probably about a million to one, or less. Especially since the new tactic in warfare seems to be to immigrate into Western countries and kill some local civilians, a.k.a. terrorism. The present and future of warfare seems to be asymmetric warfare and that means new ideas are needed.

However, since Ireland does not have a big military, there should always be a Plan B because we don't know what's going to happen in the next 10, 20 or 50 years. Any enemy could pop up anywhere at any time, including closer to home. Every crazy out there may not "respect our neutrality," and there's enough of them out there.

Noone builds a military or defense policy because of a specific threat (usually) but rather for preparedness.