Ireland - now considered one of most vulnerable countries in the EU (defense wise)

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847601#Comment_121847601

Ah stop will you. You're not even making a point. But well done on using the death of the poor girl to not make a valid point. What has any of this to do with my post? Some of you lads are a little too obsessed with Russia-Ukraine.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847372#Comment_121847372

We're more likely to be invaded by the UK again than by Russia

(we're also more likely to be invaded by the USA tbh)

Neither are particularly likely, so I'd rather not waste billions on hardware so it can rust away on bases never to be used, or demolished in 3 days of an actual air bombardment from one of the worlds military superpowers

Grassy Knoll

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847650#Comment_121847650

Agree, IMHO it is cynical and cowardly for people to say shure let the Brits and US will defend us … somehow buried in this argument is a perspective that their lives are more expendable than ours … or a view that somehow we can rely upon friends to come to our aid when we have wilfully and blatantly done nothing to help ourselves for years. Maybe that argument can work when poor and broke, but a bit hollow now especially when we have maritime interests directly impacting our economy and way of life.

GreeBo

Before I worry about our defensive ability, someone will have to explain what the threat is?

Vulnerable to attack by who? China?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847573#Comment_121847573

Our island is already a part of NATO until the north reunify. There is zero chance that Russia would be permitted to attack and invade the republic of Ireland so they could stage an attack on the UK or Europe.

We would be much better off joining an EU defence force, but many or the same exact people on here who think we should spend more money on our defense are also opposed to the EU and would go nuts at the idea of an EU army that could station some of their hardware on Irish territory

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847057#Comment_121847057

If that happened or attempted to happen we would be firmly in WW3.

People need to stop self scare mongering.

Ireland are part of the EU which have a mutual defence clause, the vast majority of the EU are in NATO.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847601#Comment_121847601

They didn't 'dismantle their Nukes' their Nukes were part of the soviet union, and when the Soviet union broke up, as part of Non proliferation agreements, they took down their Nuclear arsenal.

Just as well BTW, if it wasn't for those disarmaments, how many of those ex soviet countries would be rogue nuclear states now and we'd all most likely be living in a nuclear wasteland now

GreeBo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847719#Comment_121847719

So Ireland has the same risk as Ukraine or the US in your mind?

Should we also have a space program, in case of rogue asteroids? We cant be relying on others afterall...

whisky_galore

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847693#Comment_121847693

Back in the 30s we would have been laughing at the concept of anyone ever gathering intelligence and drawing up plans to potentially invade us too.

Russman

I agree we're unlikely to be attacked directly, but I 100% think we should be spending much more on defence. Even if only to show that we're at least doing something to contribute to our security, if we expect in turn to be protected by someone else. I totally get that we're not neutral, nor should we be IMO unless we can somewhat credibly defend that neutrality like the Swedes and Finns prior to joining NATO or the Swiss even now. Its embarassing being a freeloader. No, we're never going to be able to fight off the US, UK or Russia, but at least show that we take it seriously. For those talking about EU common defence coming to our aid, I think we'd all agree a conflict between Russia and one of the Baltics or eastern European countries is far more likely than an invasion of Ireland, are we ok with sending Irish troops to defend Lithuania or Germany ? If it cuts both ways.

whisky_galore

At the very least, at a bare minimum, we should be monitoring and spying the sh1t out of the Russian Embassy and monitoring the movements and activities of Russia-friendly individuals and groups and any other bad actors with unfriendly intentions online and irl.

DeadHand

I'm always amazed at these type of threads when someone inevitably raises the spectre of a Russian naval invasion.

A D-Day in West Cork spearheaded by a coalition of Paicific Island nations is equally likely and only slightly less feasible.

I do agree investment in the Navy and border control in general is needed to address the twin epidemics of drug and people trafficking.

Though, when we have a corrupt, compromised government that has legalised, monetised and encouraged people trafficking for profit on a massive scale, combating it becomes difficult.

fly_agaric

@Scipri0

What they want is for us to be another customer when it comes to buying their weapons and gear, and no matter how much Ireland bought, it wouldn't really help us anyway.

Bears remembering there is an extremely large and resource thirsty war happening in Europe.

European countries, which were poorly armed relative to end of Cold war, have sent hundreds of their tanks & ifvs, artillery, aircraft, air defence systems etc. etc. to Ukraine and it is just about holding off Russia, so more is needed. They are also busy restocking (and increasing strength of their militaries in some cases).

Being realistic, the weaponsmakers are not hanging on the decisions of the Irish govt. to buy more, they cannot keep up with the orders, and are being screamed at to ramp up production.

LambshankRedemption

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847092#Comment_121847092

There is nowhere more covert than off the coast of a country that has zero monitoring capabilities.

GreeBo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847741#Comment_121847741

I'm coming up with strawmen? You compared our risk to that of USA and Ukraine!

Can you explain how our military defense is going to come into play in your scenario of new government policies? We need a better military so we can stage a military coup perhaps? I've always thought we needed a good old junta.

GreeBo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847757#Comment_121847757

What size of military do you think we would need to defend against anyone who might be thinking of invading us?

I don't think it will be Malta, for example. So we would be defending ourselves against the likes of Russia or China.

Not withstanding the fact that someone else might notice an invasion that has to make it all the way across the rest of Europe before it reached us, how exactly do you think we would fare against one of these armies? Chinese army has over 2 million active soldiers...and they could launch an attack on us from the comfort of 1,000KM away.

But yeah, we should spend more on our military as that would frighten them off.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847751#Comment_121847751

The world where every former soviet block country has their own arsenal of 'dirty bombs' is not the utopia you seem to think it is

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847757#Comment_121847757

America, UK, France and Russia all would be extremely dumb to not have some plan somewhere for how to invade Ireland if they needed to for their own defence (if only to prevent us from being used as a staging point by a more powerful adversary)

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121846735#Comment_121846735

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847003#Comment_121847003

We are chronic freeloading, and part of an continent that is freeloading on American Defense via NATO.

2% of GDP to defense should be the floor, not the target.

csirl

We"re one of the few countries in the world that hasnt been attacked, invaded or at war in the past 100 years. So we're doing something right.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121848044#Comment_121848044

?

Where do you live?

L.Ball

In terms of defence spending the "threat" from Russia is a red herring used to either scare people or dismiss the need entirely, I don't believe Ireland is in any danger from a military strike from any nation, but as I've stated many times we have a vast sea territory and have almost zero means of monitoring it, be it smuggling of drugs, people, illegal fishing or basically any activity as we have no facility to detect or prevent such.

We need to reduce our army or scrap it entirely, offer to retrain the personnel staying on transferring to our navy and airforce, and offer generous redundancy for those who dont, we need a much larger fleet of ships to patrol our waters and aircraft to support them.

Ultimately the best option would be to scrap our navy and airforce and amalgamate them into a militarized coast guard, which would serve our purposes far more than any dedicated military force.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847866#Comment_121847866

Without stating an argument here- maybe just a bit of debate- do you not think it would make more sense to improve our defence in case anything were to happen?

Ie:

get primary radar so we can see any military aircraft with their transporters turned off flying in our airspace.

get sonar capabilities to monitor our waters and what’s going on underneath the waves.

Invest In Navy hardware and recruitment/improvements so we can patrol and intercept in our waters and tray and stop/reduce drug and people smuggling.

Invest in airforce hardware and recruitment/improvements in conditions so we can patrol and intercept in our skies and not depend on the RAF in this regard.

highpitcheric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121847693#Comment_121847693

You'll be waiting for any sort of detail or structure in this question, as its almost entirely based around wild assumption and schoolyard style exaggeration.

Like how having a lack of defense becomes having zero defense whatsoever. Or a hse attack means we have no cybersecurity. Underinvestment becomes zero investment. Etc.

Theres no proper balanced assessment. Its just hey Ukraine happened and we dont have jets therefore we're bumming off nato. Then the good old "National shame" card.

CalamariFritti

Well, I get it, tooling up is all the rage these days, but if you want to bankrupt the country go right ahead and create a 'proper defence force' which will ultimately be useless and non-sensical anyway. Like who's going to attack us, who - no matter what sort of force we had - we could meaningfully resist?

And if someone actually did - which is so far fetched it is beyond belief - it would come on the back of an overall situation that would be so f** up, that - again - whatever our contribution might be would be meaningless and wouldn't make a difference to ourselves either.

All we need is what we have. Enough to deter large scale smugglers and potential terrorist piss-takers and do a bit of general policing the waters. A bit of peace keeping to wave the flag. Grand. Anything past that would be a non-sensical black hole for money.

Unless of course people think Iceland might invade us or someone like that. Not serious btw. Just to make a point wrt the absurdity of it.