Report claims Defence Forces Admit ”They Cannot Meaningfully Defend Ireland”

Gatling

Whats with the whole faux outrage coming from Posters who have little or no knowledge of military capability or what the defense forces actually need equipment wise .

It's like listening to an Ian Paisley speech no ,no no ,

Never , never , never

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557231#Comment_118557231

I think that's the point that posters are making, yes, pretty much. We have an army but for all intents and purposes they seem to be about as effective as the St. John's ambulance. They have the uniforms and a little bit of kit so they can pass themselves off as an army. But in reality it's just a facade, just for ceremonial purposes as far as I can see.

Did you smash it

Ireland is one of the very few European countries without a metro system. Dublin has one of the worst traffic in the world.

there’s a problem with a expensive solution where we are behind the European curve.

irelands defence forces being the worst in the EU is a problem for a couple of fringey types not the general public. As another person said, there’s no votes in it so there’s no chance anything will happen in terms of bulking up Ireland’s defenses.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118559670#Comment_118559670

It won't be massively bulked up and nobody is calling for massive hundreds billions spends , 3 billion a year would be more than enough to increase capability and reforms

Manic Moran

Why would we need subs?

They are extremely cost-effective in the purely military sense, and would be the only 'reasonable' thing a small country could afford with significant naval deterrence effect. The problem is that they are one-trick ponies, and cannot be used for other jobs (fishery patrol, search-and-rescue, etc) in peacetime which places them reasonably low down on the 'practical' priority list. For example, the Dutch have four, the Norwegians six, Sweden five. The Irish military has much bigger practical priorities than subs, regardless of their military benefit for a seafaring nation.

Sleepy

Out of interest, if given carte blanche, what level of funding would the top-brass of the Irish military actually want in order to be confident they could "meaningfully defend" the Island? IIRC, the Dept of Defence routinely under-spends it's budget allocation?

I'm assuming proper pay for the members of the defence forces, enough funding to recruit to fill the vacancies, cover training requirements etc would be a given but how much capital spending do those in charge of our military actually think they'd need? I'm guessing it's probably far lower than what some of the armchair generals here would be calling for? I know eff all about such matters myself though, just have a bit of an interest since my Grandad was military.

(When I say "meaningfully defend" here, I'd mean be able to put up enough of a fight to deter a potential invader, not necessarily to be able to beat anything thrown against us)

Did you smash it

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118559766#Comment_118559766

200 million will not happen, nevermind 3 billion. If we get attacked feel free to tell us I told you so. If it’s any consolation the metros that would be built and actually used with 3 billion can be used as bomb shelters when we invaded.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118559911#Comment_118559911

Metro - more chance of an aircraft carrier

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118558551#Comment_118558551

Our defence forces are idle 99.999% of the time.... so as I said, disband it. At least be honest about it.

I honestly don't care either way, we either invest in the defence forces and make it somewhat capable or just disband it and let other organisations do the same roles. At least that way we will be honest about it.

Regarding Afghanistan, the airlift of Irish civilians was a bit of a clusterfuck and an embarrassment. We had to leave people behind because we didn't have the capacity and we were literally begging other countries to help us out. We used a lot of diplomatic capital there.

If we had to do it again, id say many other countries will turn around and say, 'lads sort yourselves out!'

Psychlops

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557805#Comment_118557805

So you dont blame him for leaving then slag them?

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557278#Comment_118557278

It always comes down to two factors - how much are you willing to pay and how many are willing to serve? The Irish national territory is bigger than Germany do you want to try and defend it all or just a few bit of it. …

We have 25 F18s here is Switzerland, can cover the entire national territory in minutes, but they need replacing and in any case we can only staff them during office hours. Otherwise we depend on the French. That is the reality of small nations.

Strumms

At least you have 25 something, we have zero.

when the taxpayers needed to collect PPE… we didn’t have a single aircraft capable with a suitable lift capacity… not a single one…

The Aer Corps tell us…amongst their roles…

Tactical Mobility and Logistic Support & aid to civil power…

When that support was required our government had to pick up the phone to Aer Lingus, Ryanair….the IAC and their ability to aid the country during an unprecedented crises ? Zilch, nada, zero…

If they can’t support getting in PPE… defend us ?

there are dozens of museums in the world which have more aircraft capable of defending us then we do.

Dyr

You could always just form a civic militia and arm the peasantry with Steyrs

Could you imagine the horror and shock in civic society

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118563299#Comment_118563299

Recall a number of years ago the Swiss authorities were quite embarrassed when a passenger jet was hijacked (by the pilot) and diverted and landed in Geneva. All before the Swiss Air Force even came close to responding.

Sleepy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118564081#Comment_118564081

Perhaps a stupid question but I'll ask it at the risk of looking foolish:

Would the creation of a large number of caches of light arms be a cheap and effective means of providing a country like Ireland with a defensive capability?

As an unarmed citizenry with a small standing army Ireland would be easily steamrolled by any conventional invasion force and this wouldn't change that. Were, say, each division of the RDF to have a cache of cheap, reliable firearms and weaponry (I'm thinking the likes of AK47s, semtex etc. that a citizen could quickly be given instruction in the use of) wouldn't that provide the basis for any resulting occupation to be met with a prolonged guerrilla resistance by a mix of reservists and citizen volunteers lead by whatever remained of the PDF?

Dyr

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118565131#Comment_118565131

Like I said, civic society and the polticians would **** themselves at the very thought. If we had similar back in the 70s, Catholics in the north would have been armed to the teeth at the first sign of sectarian violence from the state. We did the exact opposite, the government hauled in as many legally held firearms as they could.

We like to ignore that we're probably the only western European country with a history of serious ethnic violence that could flare up again. The Basques are in the halpenny place.

BattleCorp1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118565131#Comment_118565131

The Gardai, Government and Media are doing their best to take guns off of law abiding citizens. I can't ever see them going for something like this.

Something like that would make it a little more difficult for a force to occupy our country in the long term but most likely we would only be used as a stepping stool to get to our nearest neighbours.

CJhaughey

The thing about a functional military is that they are indeed an aid to civil power.

Think about another small island nation with a similar sized population.

New Zealand has a decent sized navy for the size of its population, an airforce that has actually got airlift capacity and some decent helicopters.

All of which were used in the 2016 Earthquake to rescue and resupply civilians that had been cut off by landslides.

NZ defence spending is roughly 1.6% of GDP. Irelands is roughly 0.3% of GDP

Its easy to say we don't need to have any military capacity at all but when there is a need for example a disaster of some magnitude who steps in to help clear up? The Gardai? Civil defence? The GAA?

Once a forces strength falls below a certain point its very difficult to retain and retrain the individuals needed to maintain the level of professionalism and I fear that the Navy is very near to that point and many other parts of the military as well.

The other side of the military is that you are able to provide a decent wage and training to many young people that may not be suited to traditional tertiary education, the military allows them to reskill and contribute meaningfully.

shootermacg

Buy one nuke and fire it at the first country to invade. Simple! :D

ronivek

Just a few questions/points to consider:

• Ireland as a nation has never been engaged in any form of overt and intentional military hostilities with any other nation. Why should we reasonably expect to ever be involved in such hostilities when neither the World Wars nor Cold War involved us in any meaningful way?
• Even if we were invaded: is resistance actually the best way to react in any case? If for example Russia did decide to invade us: wouldn't it be better if we didn't actually have any defensive military capabilities? They show up, land a few thousand troops to secure strategic locations with very little or no deaths, and then the country continues more or less as normal.
• Any money spent on defending against some hypothetical situation which has never been encountered in the history of the state means reducing expenditure on things that actually do matter on a day to day, week to week, and year to year basis.

Personally I don't think the Government of this country or possibly even the majority of its citizens would actually want to be able to 'Meaningfully Defend Ireland' from a hostile state actor; and the fact our Defence Forces are in such a poor state is precisely because that has never been their actual aim. They're an aid to the civil power and 'Sea Police', a place to train and pay those who maybe couldn't find a place working in other parts of our society, a place to leverage in diplomatic missions around the world, and that's about it.

CreadanLady

I don't think we would be able to mobilise a guerilla fighting force these days, if the situtation ever called for it. We are too me-fein now. We just don't produce men like Tom Barry, Sean South, Liam Lynch and Michael Collins anymore.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118566049#Comment_118566049

That's exactly what would happen if a war broke out or foreign aggression the army will disband ,and the guerilla command goes live

Harryd225

The article says the defence Forces that the army’s own assessment is that it “is not equipped, postured or realistically prepared to conduct a meaningful defence of the State against a full spectrum force for any sustained period”.

We will never and never have been able to do that, even if we did have a very well equipped, well resourced well trained army we would not be able to defend ourselves "against a full spectrum force", if we ever did get invaded by a country like Russia our only option would be IRA style guerilla warfare seen in the 20s and 70s, so we can forget the idea of wasting money needlessly building up our defence forces. We could do with a few touch ups for the more minor security issues but anything more than that is pointless.

blanch152

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557498#Comment_118557498

Ah yes, the fabled invasion that wasn't an invasion but an invasion dressed up as a humanitarian mission and that NATO would ignore being invaded on its western front. It was extreme Walter Mitty stuff.

The same set of posters also claim that there would be no problem dealing with any Loyalist resistance in the event of a united Ireland. Given what has been said on this thread about the state of the Irish army, we would probably have to invite the British Army back into Belfast to deal with any loyalist resistance to a united Ireland. The boys would lose it then.

Harryd225

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118566049#Comment_118566049

Don't forget men like Francis Hughes and Brendan Hughes.

Brendan took on elite army units armed with nothing but a handgun back in the 70s.

Gatling

Some people are quick 😜

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557268#Comment_118557268

Some people who are drugged out of their minds with US media think that they need to have some US Republican style argument about defense spending.

It's all a load of shte. Any same person knows we need a few boats to stop smuggling, a few planes to help and a few lads for the UN.

We have no conventional enemy to worry about invading us and ain't going to any time soon. The only kind of defense spending we need is cyber security.

Harryd225

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118566083#Comment_118566083

The plan wasn't as crazy as it sounds, the army accepted they had no capability to engage successfully in conventional, offensive military operations against the security forces in Northern Ireland, which is what you are you trying to make out was the plan.

The plan was to launch guerrilla style operations like what the IRA did in the 20s.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118557952#Comment_118557952

More Murica BS here. You really think we are going to save the country with farmers shotguns. Cop the fk on.

Gatling

@blanch152 Ah yes, the fabled invasion that wasn't an invasion but an invasion dressed up as a humanitarian mission and that NATO would ignore being invaded on its western front. It was extreme Walter Mitty stuff.

Cross the border with a handful of bullets and then brake in to ruc stations to secure ammunition ,and open a safe corridor from Derry to the border ,

One big problem .

The British army