New Choppers Cancelled On Air Corps

Morpheus

"To provide value for money military services which meet the needs of Government and the public and encompass an effective Civil Defence capability."


Well theyre certainly getting €12 million more value for money now that were not buying the Air Coprs heli's, but how do you meet the needs of the public and encompass an effective civil defence capability, when theres no bloody Search and Rescue service because the govt have cancelled the new equipment we were going to get??? No money eh?? then how the f*ck can Bertie afford his new Stadium?? explain that to someone who is taking their last sip of the Atlantic.

I think its time some of us organised a new group to raise the public awareness level in this country of the plight of the air Corps, the waste of money that would be spent on a contractor, and the dangers that a civilian contractor would bring with it.

With the overall goal to once and for all decide if we are going to keep an Air Corps with the right tools or to scrap it altogether.

My old soccer mate Pat Mooney was killed on an ageing Dauphin in adverse weather conditions one night in Waterford, I think its time we fought to have the proper equipment bought and to let the Air Corps perform SAR.

Its an embarassment that a country of our small size (geographical area) and the money that we have (bertie bowl???) in our pockets cannot perform its own SAR activities, nor patrol its own skies in anything younger than the CASA's. I agree we dont need Jets, thats a load of crap, we cant jump into modern jets from Fougas, we need modern trainers first.

We also dont need to waste Tax Payers money each year on a foreign companies equipment that is not ours, and never will be, to be flown by civilians from another country, what the f*ck happens if the civilian company goes bust, or worse its workers go on strike???

your opinions on the idea of setting up a pro-aircorps (and overall military improvement) group. We have a tiny force and spend 0.4% of our total coutries income on it each year, its a joke.

TAKE A GOOD LUCK, this was one of the new 5 helicopters we were to get, meaning MORE LIVES SAVED, no more calling out the BRITISH R.A.F. to do our rescue work, and no more SOLDIERS DYING on dodgy irish helicopters 30 yrs old and more.




thats probably the last any of us will see of it.


please, only constructive criticism is needed.

what are your opinions????

Scruff

This is the first i've heard of this, can ye put up a link to any articles?

If it is true then i agree with you totally. While there have been people making the case against (more p.c. that saying they were whinging) spending momey on the Defense Forces i don't beleive anyone could really bemoan the spending of money on buying at least a couple of modern rescue helicopters.

Having to rely on the RAF is not only an embarrasment but also puts lives at risk with the delay involved in them having to fly the extra distance.

Morpheus

THIS IS WHAT I CANT BELIEVE, so many people in Ireland just dont understand the blow to the morale of the aircorps this is, they fly on ancient aircraft, the govt prioritises stupid whimsical plans like the National Stadium (which being a soccer fan id love to see) but the money they talk about for that seems to grow on trees, this project was cancelled for the sake of 12 million euros, can u believe that??? irish lives at risk for the cost of probably the VIP boxes in the National Stadium!!! anyway, it costs our govt 7million Euros a year for the hire of SAR helicopters and crews from BOND, a scottish company, thats 7Million a year ffs that could be spent on new helicopters which would be flown by personell that are already being paid to fly them, that actually are being paid to sit down and be depressed, because the govt wont give them anything to fly with.

Some aircorps facts... 1999 Heli crashes in waterford after rescue mission, 4 killed, 2002... still no replacement helicopter purchased!

youngest aircraft are 2 large CASA Planes bought 8 years ago.

youngest Helicopters are now 20 years old (the type that crashed)

fastest aircraft is the Government Jet. The govt wants to buy a new bigger one which will cost about 50 million, no sign of that not being bought tho. more important than Air Sea rescue i should think!

they fly the same helicopters fpr the last 30 YES THIRTY years, and over thirty years cant come up with enough cash to buy the Air Corps new equipment.

They cannot strike to complain, imagine not being able to strike to complain because everytime you went to work your life was put at risk???

No-one ever lobbies on their behalf, yet they NEVER complain, its against the law for them to speak out against the govt which they are sworn to empower. so who WILL do it??

The simple fact is we need the initiative to buy equipment to save lives.

Heres the official story mate, from the RTE WEBSITE from friday..

---

19:12) The Minister for Defence, Mr Michael Smith, TD, has announced a reduction in Defence expenditure this year.

In a statement, Mr Smith said the "painful decision" was to ensure that the overall expenditure would be in line with the original estimate for the year as a whole.

Mr Smith said plans to buy medium lift helicopters would be cancelled, but that the purchase of eight fixed wing trainer aircraft would go ahead.

He said it was expected that expenditure on compensation claims and overseas allowances would be about €10m less than expected.

---

weve needed these choppers since 1980, the govt gave themselves an average €150 a week payrise last week too. Bertie now pulls in €200,000 a year.

the trainer aircraft have been waited on for 5 years since our last jets were retired because they were too old to fly.

we spend a tiny tiny tiny ammount of money on the defence of our neutrality each year.

your thoughts?

dathi1

No sorry... we need €400 million for our immigration needs. eh no thats 450 this year. cheers the gov.

Morpheus

OH YEAH,

defence expenditure for the aircorps was last year set to be €400
over the next 10 years, thats not 400 a year, that 400 over 10 yrs!!! and we wonder why we have ancient out of date things flying in our airspace??? theyre not UFO's its just the Air Corps managing to get one of its 32 aircraft (average age 34 years old)flyable.

There is only one type of Irish air corps plane still manufactured today. sad huh?

Fidelis

It's not just a simple case of Mr. Smith cancelling the contract. It goes back a few months.

Basically, Sikorsky won the contract because it promised to bring much needed business to FLS. Not purely on the grounds that it's helicopter was the better of the others on offer i.e. Eurocopter's Cougar. Eurocopter felt cheated by the Minister's decision to go for the S-92 contract and rightly so. Eurocopter subsequently brought the matter to court and the legal fee's began to build up for the government. It seemed more financially viable for Mr. Smith to pull out of the whole thing.

Let me point out that the S-92 is not in service with any other nation. Ireland would have been the first nation to operate them. It's not in service with any other nation because there are better alternatives on offer. The Minister should be looking for something that has been tried & tested and that has a good history of reliability like the Puma, Cougar, Sea King etc.

This is nothing new though. It took an epoch for Mr. Smith to acquisition £40 for 40 Mowag APC's and the Air Corps have been promised jets and medium-lift helicopters for years.

Occidental

Agree with the above and would expect GE/Sikorsky to hit the government with a large compensation claim in the near future. In fairness CHC have done a good job with the S61's so far and this would have made it fairly easy for the minister to back out of the S92 deal (SAR coverage around the Irish coast is currently better than it's ever been)

Morpheus

what are you talking about puma and sea-kings for!!!! theyre old technology! all the same, the s-92 is soon to be certified and already has numerous contracts signed, but mostly by british and canadian private companies, for SAR duties. I agree we should have gone with Eurocopter, just another case of our gov f*cking things up.

We shoud NOT be depending on ANY private companies to cover our SAR duties, it is a disgrace and an embarassment that we have military personell trained in this role AND PAID TO BLOODY WELL DO IT, who are now sitting around kicking the dirt and staring bleakly at an empty sky and future because they have no Aircraft at their disposal.

It is in the long run in our best interests and most importantly as far as the gov is concerned cash wise, to buy equipment and use it. To pay for individual companies in the way we are, will in the long run cost us e, and leave us with less. 10ys at 7mill a year for BOND helicopters providing SAR, 70million?????and that isnt taking into account inflation over the period?

We could buy 6 or 7 medium lift helicopters for that kind of money, far more than the 2 s-61's BOND have provided for SAR activities. 50% of our population now partake in aqautic activities from commercieal fishing to pleasure and sports, thats a 20% increase in the last 10 years, yet we now have less airworthy equipment than we did 10 years ago??? the trade off WILL be human life. Mark my words. Its only a matter of time before another 40yo Irish Air Corps chopper crashes, thanks Fianna FALL. what makes me sick is that i actually voted for the b*stards.

Morpheus

So now....

how do u all feel knowing that we are going to be left with little or no SAR cover?

That the govt has cancelled orders for 5 yes FIVE SAR helicopters for the Air-Corps and plans to replace them with only one or two privately owned civilian run SAR helicopters of the same size???

That the govt is over the course of 5 years going to spend more of our money HIRING these civilians to do the job than it would cost to buy the bloody helicopters in the long run, just to balance THIS years books???

That they have ALREADY spent millions of euros (yes yours AND mine) in training pilots to do the job and having run a competion to decide on a company to build the new Search and Rescue choppers they fecked the whoe thing up? and have us with qualified pilots and no equipment???

ITs time Irish people made a stand, this would not happen in ANY other country and quite simply its because we sit down and shut up anytime they do anything like this!

Fidelis

Morphéus: if, two years after the tragic deaths of three servicemen, Michael Smith still isn't motivated to provide sufficient SAR coverage, then he never will.

Morpheus

well thats my whole point isnt it???

he ISNT motivated because no1 is putting him under pressure, the Armed forces CANNOT speak out, when you join you bind your self to uphold the govt and therefore agree 100% with all laws and decisions they make, you CANNOT show disagreement, or you will be treated as a traitor to your country.

your right 0 motivation = nothing done, thats why this issue NEEDS to be raised, and something NEEDS to be done about it.

you want info about the aircorps, go here
http://geocities3375.community.everyone.net/community/scripts/topics.pl?NodeID=234458&ClientID=645093


or here
http://ub2.homepagetools.com/boomer/UltraBoard.pl?Action=ShowBoard&Board=aircorps&Idle=10&Sort=&Order=&Session=

these are other irish boards and communities which are concerned totally with the irish miltary, they have interesting information because both civilians and annonymous Military personell use them, you will get info here you WONT find an ANY govt website.


We need ACTION. its a disgrace,

sweden is a neutral country and has a very comprehensive armed force, they have one of the largest DEFENCE only armed forces in the world. why dont we have even an small efficient one ourselves?

Fidelis

This isn't about defence issues at all. Let Sweden have all the S-Tanks & Grippens they want. Fair dues to them. This is about Ireland's over-strecthed SAR capability. It is one of these utterly mind boggling situations which could so easily be resolved with a small amount of funding. I used to keep a close eye on the military contracts for the apc's and the jet trainers but so many promises and commitments were broken that I abandoned all interest on the matter. In other words, I'll believe it when I see it.

Scruff

from the irish indo today:

A High Court action by French-Germany helicopter manufacturer Eurocopter against the decision by the Department of Defence to award a contract for new medium-lift helicopters for the Air Corps to rival US firm Sikorsky has been settled.

Eurocopter had been seeking an explanation as to why its tender to supply the helicopters had been rejected.

In the High Court yesterday John Rogers SC said the issue had been settled and asked that the case be struck out.

Earlier this month, Defence Minister Michael Smith announced that the decision to buy the helicopters had been scrapped as part of cost-saving measures in his department.

A new tender competition will be held next year.

bet ye they won't buy them next year either.

Morpheus

And now another pile of scrap falls out of the air

http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/not_important/gazelle_crash.html

last week baldonnel, bet no1 heard about THIS crash??

by the way, its a write-off, yet another ANCIENT, unsafe, NOT to be replaced, helicopter gone.