Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

We are Non Aligned. During WW2 we supplied vital information to the allies. This included U Boat movements to Weather information for D Day landing.

This states offical stance was sit on the fence and see what way the wind blows before we commit

The German Luftwaffe prisoners held in the Curragh while their RAF fellow prisoners all managed to find their way to the border might disagree with you there.

Don't forget, being Neutral didn't prevent our ships from being sunk or the Luftwaffe from bombing us.

Churchill didn't want us to join, he just wanted to get the ports back that he had lost in 1938. Remember Churchill?

We also allowed the "Donegal Corridor" where allied aircraft were permitted to fly through on their way to protect the Allied Convoys in the Atlantic.

We weren't neutral in WW2, we were just delinquent.

And it was in favour of the Allies anyway, whatever it was.

Any way back to the actual topic. So Harry your sitting at home eating your corn flakes and Shanwick rings you and says Harry we got a problem a Easyjet flight from the canarys heading back to belfast wont return any calls. Its currently 30 mins from wexford and due to fly up over the east coast and it seams to be losing altitude. In are current situation what advice would you give shanwick?

History not your strong point clearly. In his eyes, the Celtic Irish were "untermensch" and had Plan Grun succeeded,(The Nazi plan to invade ireland, after the completion of Operation Sealion) many of our grandparents would have joined the Gypsies, Jews ans all those inferior to the "master race" in the Concentration Camps.

Of course, the Nazi's would have been assisted throughout by their Collaborators within the IRA.

Well in my 27 year career as an Intercept Pilot for US Customs first, then for the Dept of Homeland Security, which I retired from, I used to do exactly that. Among many other things, I would intercept smuggler airplanes, most of the time as a pilot, but sometimes as an armed apprehension team member as well. We would take turns on who flies and who goes in the back and jumps out upon landing to make the arrest.

But to answer your question It depends on what the unidentified craft does, if an aircraft is in controlled airspace (above 18,000ft or around airports etc.) it needs to have its transponder on and be in active communications with the controller (not true for all airspace, but true enough for this answer). If it doesn't, it's going to get attention, quickly although in Ireland there is next to no threat for any malicious aircraft coming into our airspace so the idea of shooting anything down would almost never happen anyway apart from extraordinary circumstances like us getting into a war in which our fighter jets would be next to useless.

The whole point being we have no need for fighter jets, hence the reason we don't have them.

You didn't answer.

It is not in active comms with the controller. Nobody said anything about shooting it down until you did.

What would you do?

A sure it's just Navan. Needs painting anyway

I think you would get a quicker responce out of fastway at this stage

QRA doesn't take weekends off!

I agree completely with the first part of your post, if you walked around with a firearm like one of those crazy Americans thinking you need it just to be safe then I would think you are crazy.

Same thing applies to us buying fighter jets which we don't need, the logic you used comparing having a gun just to be safe and having fighter jets just to be safe is very relevant.

The reason we don't have fighter jets is because we don't need them.

He/she choose Navan because they werent in control of the aircraft.

Would you not be a bit more concerened about the PC12 Spectres the state bought?

I was on a flight from Dublin to Rhodes that day.

As it turned out, we were heading south over the Balkans at the same time that the doomed Helios flight was in a northwesterly track to Athens and unresponsive to ATC calls.

Our flight and perhaps a dozen others were diverted to Thessoloniki and held on the tarmac for over an hour. When we disembarked onto fleets of buses, four Greek AF F-16s could be seen standing by on the outer apron, I never found out if they had escorted any of the other diverted flights, but their strobes were on and it appeared they were awaiting orders.

When we reached the terminal we were allowed to switch on our mobile phones for the first time. At that time in 2005, it was only voicecalls and SMS and as each wave of passengers walked in, you could hear a thousand text alerts all at once as people's families tried to contact them, knowing they were on flights in the region where the News was reporting an unresponsive flight of indeterminate origin.

As we know now, the Helios flight entered an automated holding pattern for its scheduled stop-off in Athens, with the flight crew and passengers suffering from Hypoxia. Two members of the cabin crew on an independent oxygen supply, visually acknowledged the fighters that had intercepted the 737 and attempted to retain control, with one of them an early trainee pilot. Unfortunately the engines flamed out in turn from fuel starvation and the plane was sent into a languid spinning descent, with the two cabin crew seeming to have had a hand in directing it away from heavily populated areas before impact with the ground.

Later in the day we continued on to Rhodes, in silence for the most part, having learned of the crash and reassured our families we were not involved.

It was the most sobering incident I ever personally experienced in aviation until 9 years later, on the way back from Australia, a few days before Easter, I walked in to the transit lounge in Dubai Airport to be greeted by the sight of dozens of people in bandages and dressings, with crutches and wheelchairs. Some of the survivors of the Brussels Airport bombing who were fit to travel, were being escorted onwards to the places they were trying to get to when the terminal was attacked. Sickening.

Not sure you hit that on the head

I know the chieftain. Those great vids. I should have put a smiling face to show I was joking. My bad