Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

But yet we still have the Russian military aircraft venturing into Sweden's airspace supposedly with tactical nukes underwing. While they lack the ability to sustain a conflict, with one rash move, they can change our quality of life with one "mishap". And clearly, their level of training or discipline cannot be trusted.

And don't forget the Smolensk air disaster..

Our on-going problem is strategic blindness. We are always caught a dollar short. It is Defence and volatility right now in Europe. Yet we were happy to let tech. companies feed us the benefits of being connected to Gas and electric Grids and close down many high output Irish Power Stations. In Defence we opted for show the Flag, fetch, carry, rescue, flood defences , feed animals in snow, and put out fires.

You can build a thousand houses over two years and a stick of bombs can level them and the occupants in seconds of mayhem. Some blame also attaches to the Military leadership and ongoing neutrality paralysis.

Well you'll need more aircraft than they had so...

I suspect the reality is their aircraft and the Russian's do not have any "modern" defense against the anti air defenses missiles and guns on the ground.

Which is why the Russians are reverting to shelling and rockets because they don't control the air either. Through they have a 5 to 1 advantage in numbers.

While on paper they had lots of aircraft, they had few that were combat ready, due to underfunding by successive corrupt Putin funded governments.

In Ukraine's situation, if it had a better presence in the skies, they wouldn't have to rely so much on MANPADS, and they would have better control over the drones being used to spot for Russian artillery.

When the dust settles, it will be interesting to see how the Ukraine air force will modernise, assuming it will remain out of NATO. The prospect of retaining in use Russian made combat aircraft seems unlikely, in the long term.

Interesting saying we need to be accurate and then not being. No the Hurricanes, sea fires and vampires were not frontline aircraft by the time we had them in service, nor did we have the capability to even use their limited capabilities. No the Flower class corvettes were not frontline warships being an emergency war program already succeed in service by far better designs when we got them and not even close to being “frontline” by the time we retired them. The MTBs were an early and limited variant of MTBs compared to other British designs and highly illsuited to Irish Sea state conditions.

Harriers were never popular, they filled a role for navies that wanted air power but couldn’t afford large carriers and the US Marines, other than that they had a relatively limited customer base, and a high loss rate. Moreover given its single engine nature and limited payload and range how you think it would have served a purpose in Irish service is beyond me.

Where we are today is effectively the same as where we have always been, not enough of anything, but enough for the politicians to point at.

Harrier

"...It was conceived to operate from improvised bases, such as car parks or forest clearings, without requiring large and vulnerable air bases. Later, the design was adapted for use from aircraft carriers..."

At the end of WW2 it was realized that aircraft operating from rough runways would be useful. Especially in the Cold War. RAF practiced it for years. That's the main roll of the Harrier.

All except Finland are too big for Russia to roll over. Well in the past anyway.

The Finn's basically lost though.

Incidentally the Harrier is one of the hardest aircraft to fly.

Only initially, the Russians reorganized and the end result wasn't really in doubt. But the Finn's had no support from Germany and Sweden either. I guess it made everyone aware they need to stick together.

What you mean not really.

The Harrier doesn't need any runway, doesn't need a roadway. Its not been copied successfully until the F35. (Yak-38 wasn't a success)

The carrier role came later.

For all its disadvantages its unique abilities means its still in service, and was used in recent conflicts.

I will agree it wasn't something useful for Ireland.

If we buy fighters and never use them in combat will that make then not useful. Are unused nuclear weapons not useful. Weird argument. Especially considering this threads subject.

The Harrier is single engine cheap aircraft, very adaptable. Makes it very useful. As its ability to fly off smaller carriers.

The concept of light carriers isn't going away...

It wouldn't have had such a long service life if it didn't offer utility and value.

What a strange post.

Various marks of the Harrier have been in front line service for in excess of 50 years. It is still in service in three countries. It has seen action in numerous conflicts including the Falklands, Gulf Wars 1 and 2, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

It evolved way beyond it's initial "runway not neccessary" concept and excelled in Air to Ground(various GR and AV8 versions) and Air to Air(FRS Mks 1 and 2). So much so in fact that for land based versions its VTOL capabability was merely a happy aside. It was simply good at what it did.

Operated by RAF, RN, USMC, Italian Navy, Spanish Navy, Indian Navy, Thai Navy so hardly unsuccessful on the export front.

"If it wasn't made in UK"?? It was introduced at a time the TSR-2 was cancelled in favour of the American F-111 (later cancelled in favour if the American F-4.)

The RN when building a carrier big enough to be CATOBAR capable instead opted to commit itself to another 50 years of S/VTOL ops by selecting a ski jump instead of a catapult and ordering the F35B at the expense of the longer ranged F35C.