Would you like to see EU Military Bases in Ireland?

Avgas

OS119 wrote: »

the argument of 'we need to be a bit sensitive about this' is writing dissidents a blank cheque to define the security relationship between the UK and Ireland.

TRUE I concede up to a point...BUT that nice line of argument ignores actual security realities. If a BA Battalion came to play in the Curragh the cost of Garda overtime alone would probably pay for the entire costs of the Ex!...

For practical reasons I don't think it will happen that way.......Your right in theory maybe.... but not in practice.

The fact that one takes such nutters somehow seriously does not mean your letting them define anything....it is just common sense security thinking....

BTW Swiss have a long history of making secret plans with the French, never mind exercising with them......these 'understandings' going back to the 1920s...even......Neutrality notwithstanding.......and all that.....

The important thing to stress in the Irish public mind is that

NEUTRAL DOES NOT MEAN PACIFIST/UNARMED
MILITARY DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL BAD
EU MILITARIES HAVE A NEED TO TRAIN TOGETHER TO DO JOINT PEACEKEEPING.....
THAT COULD/SHOULD HAPPEN HERE IN IRELAND.

I'd just side step the whole English/Irish thing.......and focus on getting those messages across......and getting useful training exercises up and running....



The issue you implicitly raise about whether some form of joint Irish-BA battle group might be a 'better fit' and make for good politics is a bigger chesnut and I'll kick to touch for now...even if it is chesnut season....:rolleyes:

Sgt. Bilko 09

OS119 wrote: »

sorry, you missunderstand the nature of the EU BG concept and doctrine.

a) the sub-units that make up the EUBG's do not form a single unit that sits - or trains - in one location waiting for a deployment order, they stay, seperately, in their own countries and only form into the BG if required.

b) if they do form up, they do so around the 'lead nation' within the BG, and on their territory - Sweden is the lead nation, if there's any forming up to be done, it'll be done in Sweden, not in Ireland.

c) the EU BG concept has no maritime or air assets alloted to it - it is an infantry battle group with armour, artillery, signals, logistics, engineering, CIMIC, C-IED, and medical support. it has no fighters and no naval vessels as part of its make up.

No i was saying in the past dutch subs unit docked at the naval base in cork. Royal dutch military do not have nothing to do with the nordic battle group i know that. But I know that none of the bg unit have subs units the posts are completely different my apologises should of put them together.

OS119

Avgas wrote: »

...TRUE I concede up to a point...BUT that nice line of argument ignores actual security realities. If a BA Battalion came to play in the Curragh the cost of Garda overtime alone would probably pay for the entire costs of the Ex!...

For practical reasons I don't think it will happen that way.......Your right in theory maybe.... but not in practice....

i accept that there are cost issues were a BA bn to exercise in the RoI - every crusty, shinner and their mangy dogs would be out protesting - but, imho, the very act of saying that such exercices can't take place because of the aforementioned shinners, crusties, students and fcukwits from the alphabet IRA cedes Irish defence policy to such people.

which is more expensive: providing policing to allow sufficient exercises to take place that the crusties and shinners get bored and give up, or to allow a very small, pretty ignorant section of political opinion to formulate the defence policy of the state?

personally i can think of several dozen joint UK/Irish exercises that would have a significant impact on the DF's ability to train for, and operate in, real world operations and yet would not require large, prolonged or overly visible deployments of British forces to Ireland - nobody is looking to have the Irish guards marching down O'Connell street with bayonets fixed and colours flying...

tac foley

johngalway wrote: »

Quite well aware of all that Tac, and as you're well aware I have many many British friends. That said, I still do not want their army on ROI soil

We have both made our point. You don't want us there and we don't want to be there.

The very last thing that any of us want is to shed any more blood over Ireland, especially our own.

...and please, what does your emoticon indicate?

tac

tac foley

OS119 wrote: »

i accept that there are cost issues were a BA bn to exercise in the RoI - every crusty, shinner and their mangy dogs would be out protesting - but, imho, the very act of saying that such exercices can't take place because of the aforementioned shinners, crusties, students and fcukwits from the alphabet IRA cedes Irish defence policy to such people.

which is more expensive: providing policing to allow sufficient exercises to take place that the crusties and shinners get bored and give up, or to allow a very small, pretty ignorant section of political opinion to formulate the defence policy of the state?

personally i can think of several dozen joint UK/Irish exercises that would have a significant impact on the DF's ability to train for, and operate in, real world operations and yet would not require large, prolonged or overly visible deployments of British forces to Ireland - nobody is looking to have the Irish guards marching down O'Connell street with bayonets fixed and colours flying...

Thank you - the still small voice of sense speaks.

In any case, no British Army unit can go ANYWHERE, even in their own country, with fixed bayonets unless they have been granted the 'Freedom of the City' in which they are marching.

Colours are usually only carried at the Ceremony of the Trooping of the colour, and not in public.

tac

Avgas

OS119 wrote: »

i accept that there are cost issues were a BA bn to exercise in the RoI -

which is more expensive: providing policing to allow sufficient exercises to take place that the crusties and shinners get bored and give up, or to allow a very small, pretty ignorant section of political opinion to formulate the defence policy of the state?

Cost issues is where its at I'm afraid given it may well be the IMF and not any sovereign Irish government deciding how many people in our DF go anywhere...soon. If you concede that....you concede my point...for practical reasons it simply won't work well today.

Mind you the recent visit by the British Type 45 destroyer seemed to go fine.....but perhaps its easier manage that......

The defence policy of the Irish state has never been well formulated....but that does not mean it is formulated by Crusties/ Shinners...etc. The political problem with Irish neutrality is that it is broadly popular, if often misunderstood, with a much wider segment of the electorate than those tiny minorities........ Nor does it become automatically formulated by such extremes merely because prudentially one takes care to avoid 'events' where these people would have a field day.

The strongest influence on our defence policy is simple geography. Just like Finland but different result because different geography/threat.

OS119

Avgas wrote: »

Cost issues is where its at I'm afraid given it may well be the IMF and not any sovereign Irish government deciding how many people in our DF go anywhere...soon. If you concede that....you concede my point...for practical reasons it simply won't work well today.

i'm afraid i don't concede the policing costs of the kind of exercises people are talking about are the kind of costs the Irish government can no no longer afford - and even if those cost were vastly greater, they should not shape defence policy, anymore than the costs of policing Greenham Common shaped British defence policy in the 1980's.

where is the policing and military cost of holding a joint UK/Irish 3 part AirLand exercise - (i) an RAF AWACS and 2 RAF Typhoons create a Air Defence Ground Environment with an Irish RBS-70 SAM battery and guard against 4 low-level RAF Tornado GR4's, (ii) the 4 Tornado's then fly to an Irish bombing range and drop EPW-III's onto targets designated by Irish troops, and (iii) the AWACS/Typhoon/RBS-70 ADGE team undertake a 'controlling Irish Air Space' exercise that looks at the mechanics of controlling civil air space without a civil ATC infrastructure?

where is the policing cost in the AIC AW139's and RAF Merlins flying an Irish Artillery Battery to Sennybridge Training Area in Mid-Wales to take part in a live firing and Bn manouver exercise - or even a composite British/Irish Infantry Company forming up in Baldonnell before flying to the Glen of Imaal for a two day 'how do we work together' peace-enforcement exercise?

Manach

Leaving aside the UK aspect for the moment, it would be a positive development in that it would give the DF valuable experience training (in Ire. and abroad) with fellow neutral(ish) nations such as Austria or Sweden.

tac foley

OS119 wrote: »

i'm afraid i don't concede the policing costs of the kind of exercises people are talking about are the kind of costs the Irish government can no no longer afford - and even if those cost were vastly greater, they should not shape defence policy, anymore than the costs of policing Greenham Common shaped British defence policy in the 1980's.

where is the policing and military cost of holding a joint UK/Irish 3 part AirLand exercise - (i) an RAF AWACS and 2 RAF Typhoons create a Air Defence Ground Environment with an Irish RBS-70 SAM battery and guard against 4 low-level RAF Tornado GR4's, (ii) the 4 Tornado's then fly to an Irish bombing range and drop EPW-III's onto targets designated by Irish troops, and (iii) the AWACS/Typhoon/RBS-70 ADGE team undertake a 'controlling Irish Air Space' exercise that looks at the mechanics of controlling civil air space without a civil ATC infrastructure?

where is the policing cost in the AIC AW139's and RAF Merlins flying an Irish Artillery Battery to Sennybridge Training Area in Mid-Wales to take part in a live firing and Bn manouver exercise - or even a composite British/Irish Infantry Company forming up in Baldonnell before flying to the Glen of Imaal for a two day 'how do we work together' peace-enforcement exercise?

Sir - respectfully, there are folks who post on this forum who would rather pay to watch boiling oil poured into the stapled-open eyes of their first-born than accept that any of your ideas could ever become reality.

Such co-operation, commonplace enough among those of us in the rest of Europe, could have happened any time in the last fifty or sixty years, but it never has. There have been any number of lost opportunities to train PDF in the UK [in the particular area taught by my unit], I'm told, all of which have been stonewalled by successive Irish governments. The long-term distrust seems to be rather one-sided. though, and here I speak from my own experience. When my own unit had six members of the PDF over for three weeks on an entirely 'unofficial' course back in the late 80's, one of the three officer members of the course was there to see that the others behaved themselves and didn't give away any 'state secrets' to the Brits who were training them. His presence there was a farce as well as a rank insult to the host nation, and as a result we were advised never to repeat it. It didn't matter the square root of bugger-all to us, seeing as it was a course we ran on a regular basis for thirty-something other nations who seemed to trust us, but having the course as a regular part of operational training for certain parts of the PDF might have made a real difference to you.

Ireland lost out on a totally free, highly-specialised and topical course of a kind that cost other nations £20,000 per student - twenty-two years ago.

tac

Manic Moran

tac foley wrote: »

Having noted the FSU's rather large collection of Ropucha and Ivan Rogov amphibious assault support ships let's not overlook the fact that the sight of these items tootling up in the direction of Ireland might just arouse an element of suspicion in the minds of anyone catching sight of them.

tac

Agreed, but was NATO really going to fire the first shot of WWIII just in case the convoy was going to make a sudden left to Shannon instead of continuing straight to Cuba for another four or five days? It would certainly have been worth the gamble from the USSR's position.

NTM

OS119

Manic Moran wrote: »

Agreed, but was NATO really going to fire the first shot of WWIII just in case the convoy was going to make a sudden left to Shannon instead of continuing straight to Cuba for another four or five days? It would certainly have been worth the gamble from the USSR's position.

NTM

its Red Sorm Rising with Shannon substituted for Keflavik - personally i'm not convinced that the practicalities of geography would allow it to work in the way that a Soviet landing on Iceland would, but i don't believe that such considerations would stop the Soviets making the attempt anyway - and, of course, a NATO response whether Ireland asked for one or not.

Avgas

The scenarios that OS119 lists involving the BA (and actually much more heavily RAF assets) all seem grand...BUT here is the brutal reality: we can't afford any of them....

And they are not priority missions right now for us. The scenario I specifically mentioned as problematic would be a land ex....that is only one of your scenarios...involving a BA Coy in the Glen.......that would be a very different PR and security issue than say hosting a few Eurofighters or something at Shannon....and playing around with the RBS70s......

Moreover, given that funding is so limited bordering on zero......the last thing the Irish DF should be doing is wasting precious time and money on training for PK/PE with the BA....when they should be doing that with their assigned EU battlegroup...in Sweden or here, and with the various parties to that wonderous unit..... NORDICBNGRP....:rolleyes:

We simply don't have the money to be training with the excellent people of the BA or the USMC........or whoever.......and you can't just off the cuff ditch the politically agreed decision to work with the Nordic battlegroup and say 'oh well the Brits actually speak English and they've load of lessons to impart to us from Astan'.

They do. Our soldiers would learn loads. It would be great. So would winning the lottery.

Operationally we're more likely to be deployed (if at all) on low-end PK missions with our buddies from the Nordic states .........The BA have cut a niche for themselves in recent years in higher intensity Peace Enforcement or actual war-fighting in Astan...the skillsets, tactics and mindsets that work well for that type of mission may well not work so well for the types of missions we may (just) get sent on........IMHO Irish DF are not ready nor is the Irish public willing to see our forces deploy to Astan, or similar, for full spectrum combat operations, regardless of whether it has a UN Mandate of not.

Those are simple realities-maybe not pleasant and p**s poor realities...but the way it is. Trying to 'kickstart' the Irish DF into a more full-on role in the world through BA joint training and deployment could backfire very badly...and indeed if something went operationally wrong...involving body bags.....it could set back by years a very wide social consensus that overseas PK missions for our DF are unquestionably a 'good thing'......

My guess is we could not even afford to sustain just the ammunition supply of a BA battalion in Astan in high intensity operations... we were arguably lucky in Chad that it turned out all right (for us..that is)........and even then it stretched us.......

I'm surprised that TAC found Irish PDF participation in BA courses so farcical.....but has it not been very routine for Irish DF persons to be doing BA courses and stuff in Larkhill, Catterick etc........over the years?

Yes, there are unfortunately people who post here with a crude anti-BA agenda...I'm not one of them. Personally know serving and ex BA people, and am well disposed towards BA, etc. Moreover, to merely point out that joint training and deployment with the BA may not be now very practical, workable or realistic for the Irish DF, given where we are, does NOT make one a rabid anti-British bigot of the usual ilk..............

Maybe give it a few weeks and where we're going viz the economy, the IMF, the ECB, the budget, etc., and we could well be asking the BA for extra CS supplies....like the Greeks ended up doing..........

tac foley

Avgas wrote: »

...I'm surprised that TAC found Irish PDF participation in BA courses so farcical.....but has it not been very routine for Irish DF persons to be doing BA courses and stuff in Larkhill, Catterick etc........over the years?........

Mr Avgas - Apologies, I should have pointed out that the comment was made to encapsulate the various courses that were undertaken in my particular part of the BA, not generally. I HAVE seen Irish gunners at Larkhill, BTW. There was nothing farcical about that - they were sweating just like everybody else and enjoying playing with some nice big AS-90s out on the ranges.

The comment about the farcical nature was to show how ridiculous it really was to send such a blatant 'watchdog' on an intelligence-related course.

tac

oncevotedff

OS119 wrote: »

....i'd love to see Ireland invite other EU states to exercise in Ireland - and for Irish units to exercise abroad - .

Your wish has already been granted.

http://www.military.ie/dfhq/pubrel/news/2007/november/news7nov.htm

OS119

Avgas wrote: »

The scenarios that OS119 lists involving the BA (and actually much more heavily RAF assets) all seem grand...BUT here is the brutal reality: we can't afford any of them....

the problem AVGAS, is that the exercises i mentioned wouldn't actually cost anything that Ireland doesn't ordinarily spend everyday merely by having standing defence forces.

the 139's are still undertaking training flights, the RBS-70 and 105mm batterys are still being paid, the infantry are still being fed and trained - all of these exercises merely involve people doing things they might not ordinarily do, not one of them involves recruiting new people, or burning fuel you wouldn't otherwise burn, or buying kit, or replacement kit, that you wouldn't otherwise buy.

yes Ireland should train with the NORBG, the problem is that Irish helicopters won't reach Sweden, and using any other form of transport means using money you wouldn't otherwise spend - so Ireland has 3 options:

1. don't bother, and hope it works out ok. i think that was US policy in Iraq in 2003.
2. cross train with somebody who lives next do, who knows what they are doing and with whom the costs can be minimal.
3. spend money that isn't in the budget to sort out the logistics of getting significant numbers of Irish soldiers to Sweden and keeping them there.

i'm not talking about joint UK/Irish training as a forerunner to a UK/Irish BG, i'm merely talking about joint training that benefits both militaries, benefits the wider UK/Irish political scene, and increases our ability to, and appetite for, working together within our shared maritime/air space environment.

Poccington

OS119 wrote: »

i'm not talking about joint UK/Irish training as a forerunner to a UK/Irish BG, i'm merely talking about joint training that benefits both militaries, benefits the wider UK/Irish political scene, and increases our ability to, and appetite for, working together within our shared maritime/air space environment.

Indeed.

We've had lads come back after completing the Platoon Commanders'/Sergeants' Battle Course, over in the BA and the benefit to the Unit itself to have troops taking part in those courses really shows.

Why the DF and the Government refuses to work with the BA on a larger scale than sending lads over on courses every now and again never ceases to amaze me.

Avgas

[QUOTE=OS119;68247343- so Ireland has 3 options:

1. don't bother, and hope it works out ok. i think that was US policy in Iraq in 2003.
2. cross train with somebody who lives next do, who knows what they are doing and with whom the costs can be minimal.
3. spend money that isn't in the budget to sort out the logistics of getting significant numbers of Irish soldiers to Sweden and keeping them there.

i'm not talking about joint UK/Irish training as a forerunner to a UK/Irish BG, i'm merely talking about joint training that benefits both militaries, benefits the wider UK/Irish political scene, and increases our ability to, and appetite for, working together within our shared maritime/air space environment.[/QUOTE]

As usual OS119 your talking sense to an altogether frightening extent....given that I'm used to listening to Irish media reports of our political class in denial as meltdown begins......BUT I would add an option 4....even cheaper

4. Get the Swedes, Norgies, estonia, Finns, etc. of NORDBG to come over HERE to play......keep them for a week...I mean we have plenty of empty hotels and empty housing estates......maybe do a discount deal Michael O Leary to fly their troops over.....
that way the cost to us of moving gear would be very low......and there may even be a net fiscal benefit for our soggy little nation.....who knows?:rolleyes:

OS119

Avgas wrote: »

As usual OS119 your talking sense to an altogether frightening extent....given that I'm used to listening to Irish media reports of our political class in denial as meltdown begins......BUT I would add an option 4....even cheaper

4. Get the Swedes, Norgies, estonia, Finns, etc. of NORDBG to come over HERE to play......keep them for a week...I mean we have plenty of empty hotels and empty housing estates......maybe do a discount deal Michael O Leary to fly their troops over.....
that way the cost to us of moving gear would be very low......and there may even be a net fiscal benefit for our soggy little nation.....who knows?:rolleyes:

its expensive - getting five nations to co-ordinate the availability of significant land forces as well as the considerable air transport assets required to get 2000 blokes, an armoured sqn, an artillery battery, a combat engineering sqn, a field hospital and the logistic tail for such a battlegroup to Ireland would be a nightmare of cosmic proportions. getting the bodies to the right airport would be administratively easy, though expensive, but getting the kit to the right place - and one would question whether whether the Glen of Imaal is big enough to accomodate a 2000 man battlegroup doing a live firing ex - would require most of the airlift capability of the NordicBG countries as well as them using their allocations for the NATO C-17 pool .

its a non-runner i'm afraid.

Avgas

Well yeah OS119..... if you bring the entire 2,000 strong bunch of Nordic lads and lassies over to play it would be a tad expensive and logistically challenging....but the same would apply if you wanted the BA to come over and 'improve us' with a smilar scale of ground forces....and given that the BA are facing savage gutting as part of their impending Defence Review..[.talk of 20,000 less troops and what not...].. I would hazard that BA willingness...to fully fund a trip to the Glen of Imaal would be quite limited as well.....

Maybe just a Coy of Finns and a few others and we could hone our IED knowledge-sets and just to be sure we're all friends get some nice BA EOD people over who are fresh from Astan to teach us all a thing or three? That would be (a) cheap enough (b) very relevant given our EOD contribution to NORDBG (c) politically correct enough....

I'd say stuff at that scale is probably planned in some sense already.

Are we are all big friends now?:rolleyes:

Like the EU!

Manic Moran

OS119 wrote: »

its Red Sorm Rising with Shannon substituted for Keflavik - personally i'm not convinced that the practicalities of geography would allow it to work in the way that a Soviet landing on Iceland would,

Might be easier for them to defend, given how much further away Ireland is from North America than Iceland is.

NTM

OS119

Manic Moran wrote: »

Might be easier for them to defend, given how much further away Ireland is from North America than Iceland is.

NTM

thats true, but Shannon is within range of every tactical fighter in Europe, and it would be far less easy to use submarines to keep away surface combatants in the shallow(ish) waters around Ireland than in the wide and deep expances of the North Atlantic around Iceland.

going for Ireland also means maintaining a sea and air line of communication through the Greenland-Iceland-Faroes-Norway gap, whereas an Icelandic adventure doesn't risk its flanks in such a dramatic way - there's also the problem of actually getting Soviet fighters to Shannon without them falling in the sea...

on the other hand, any power that could force operating bases from both Keflavic and Shannon would control the Eastern Atlantic.

Manic Moran

thats true, but Shannon is within range of every tactical fighter in Europe, and it would be far less easy to use submarines to keep away surface combatants in the shallow(ish) waters around Ireland than in the wide and deep expances of the North Atlantic around Iceland.

One would argue that by that point, every tactical fighter in Europe could be pre-occupied by certain simultaneous events going on in Germany. I think Soviet ASW equipment and doctrine was generally better geared to shallow water ops, just look at how many RBUs all their ships were equipped with.

NTM

Avgas

Interesting scenario/idea the Red Storm Rising for Shannon.

But I think another thing that wold have ruled it out would be the fact that in the 1980s the Irish PDF had enough mass to field several reasonable quality infantry battalions....anywhere between a dozen and half a dozen would have been a potent enough consideration.....plus remember the BA would have been easily enough able to stream TA battalions across from NI and UK 'mainlaind'. It would have taken time...but there would be probably enough mass there to counter any Soviet landing...and realistically what could the Soviets land...a Brigade or maybe two brigades of Naval infantry, some SOF....some decamped air assets....an AD screen of sorts.........okay initially they might have found it easy to land and seize Shannon...but after a period of a week or two......?

(They might have also been hoping for some help from domestic friendly forces.....read as will?)

By way of contrast Iceland had no infantry brigade structure whatsoever ...no depth in defence at all...just the F15s and some ground staff........anything else would have to be airdropped in....cobbled together assets...which would be needed elsewhere......

The only way it might have been possible would be if an Manic suggest that they sneaked a pretend Cuba reinforcement convoy into Shannon....but they were watched all the way.....by Nimrods and subs in 'our' sector....so any sudden dash for Shannon would have been easily picked up and quickly responded to. That naval-air battle would have been decisive-if they made it through it would be a 'workable feint/flank attack'...if not...it would be a dumb adventure far from home......and remember those assets in many cases were 'needed' for operations against NATO/Norway........could they be squandered in an Irish adventure ......?

I think the answer is 'nyet'

In this regard defence of Ireland would fall of RN hunter killer subs........and RAF strike command assets ........no offence to anyone Irish...but much of the defence of Ireland has always come down to the indirect screening power of the Royal Navy (and a few others).....strategically such a feint might have made sense in order to secure the occupation of Norway for the Russians, and perhaps greater Scandinavia as well.......use a dummy attack on Ireland to pull away critical NATO northern flank assets.....

In fact, the more obvious logic from the Russian perspective would be to monitor the situation with Shannon. If as most people at the time thought likely, the USAF/NATO would have been busy using it, with Irish government de facto approval, the Russians may have been tempted to target Shannon for a warning nuclear strike with some type of tactical package.........a kinda of semi-safe 'threat escalator' towards the end of a short war going badly for them perhaps...because Ireland was not a NATO member....giving some wriggle room fro NATO to (perhaps) not respond in kind.......?

Puts our current problems in a certain perspective maybe?:rolleyes:

Maybe a non-walt Alternative Military History or Counterfactual thread should be set up for such ramblings.....?