3 New Navy Vessels for Irish Naval Service

🙄 ahem

Course it can, its still funded by the Exchequer one way or another. The State didn't give up its rights, the Council is the State, in one manifestation.

Added to that, the Council itself has a majority of Councillors of all three Government parties. If the Government decide that Dun Laoghaire is the preferred site, then it will happen.

I disagree with Tabnab's concern about disruption to leisure in the Harbour too. You could dock the two Lake Class ships line astern, on the eastern berths of either the Carlisle Pier or St Michael's Wharf without disturbing any leisure craft.

In the below article the limits are poinred out but they are only for the irish sea and not the atlantic are they not

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40921898.html

The Retired officer mentioned is out of the loop, and were he still in it, would have a better understanding of their purpose. In the ACTUAL piece he wrote he demonstrates he is unaware of the Capability Planing behind it. I'm surprised by this as he is not retired that long, and would have been well aware, as OCNOC of the requirement to replace the P40s, and the absence of a long term replacement project.

Comparing the IPVs with the OPVs make no sense. This is down to the journalist, not the retired OCNOC. With the withdrawal of the CPV we have a current need still, for vessels which can operate in inshore waters. The P50s are unable to do so, the P60s are slightly better than the P50s in this regard but are also much larger, and not designed to operate in these waters.

Accepting a significant reduction in capability would be not replacing the P40s at all. What we want to replace them with is not yet a mature design, and given the delay in bringing the MRV to build, buying an operational already built ship off the shelf is a very wise decision in the short term.

It's worth reading not the examiner article, but Mr Barry's article in full in Signal though. The examiner piece does not seem to have spoken to the retired OCNOC for clarification his views, but instead has taken a paragraph out of context to fill an article.

Signal Summer 2022 (calameo.com)

DB's article is excellent, however the Examiner article has put words in his mouth.

And they're replacing the peacocks ...

The German Navy is also using it for their Braunschweig class corvettes and their new Baden-Württemberg class frigates, so it is quite a common concept in naval circles. The big question is going to be whether the Irish navy will have enough manpower to pull it off.

Well, for what it's worth, I'm not very impressed by these Lake class ships. Very light in tonnage and very lightly armed. The Irish sea can be pretty rough in winter. Cheap and cheerful.

Unless you have a "Bag" of endless spare crew such as in the Merchant Navy system, double crewing as an overall policy won't work out of a fixed establishment. The agencies that run crewing, only pay their clients when they are aboard ship. If they miss a trip or decline to go it costs the company little but earned leave then Zilch. In a Naval situation you have a fixed establishment, and in our case later plucked to a minimum standard. The original two crews for each ship was cut back to about 1.5 ratio. Gearing up to keep ships almost continuously at sea with the correct sets of trades and skills, where everybody is on full pay 24/7 whether ashore or afloat is a big ask for a Department that likes to hand back up to 20million euro of budget.

The effect on establishment may be in the order of Three crews per ship with extras for singleton appointments, Chippy's, RRM, EA etc. and a failsafe system to get crews to ships on time.

Not strange if you base a ship in Fiji or Falklands then you have no choice but to rotate your crew by suitable means. The vessel in Fiji carried out many week long patrols to achieve an accumulation of 100's of inspection. Their relief crew said they would hope to emulate them in amount of inspections achieved. The ship went on task in April, all pics show flat calm seas near equatorial region of 16deg South Latitude. Their relief seemed to be at a long interval. Likewise Falklands would be after about 6 months. With US overseas it can be 18 months. By the way NZ have retention problems.

The OFS system is crew rotation every 28 days. I'm saying having NO transport assets the Navy will find it difficult unless they do it by changing ship for ship. The concept to keep the ship on task is to relieve the crew in a less than two hour swap around.

Not a hope.

Look at Rosslare Harbour, they are pitching for large offshore generation assembly and support. For that, they are relying on the completion of the M11, building a new Port Access Road a reclaiming a few dozen acres to build a staging area.

Thats what it takes. Dun Laoghaire has neither the open space, nor the appropriate road infrastructure necessary to adequately fulfill the demands of a large offshore array project.

And really, 2 or 3 ships in a year berthing in DL, for dredging or light freight movements is hardly what you would call commercial traffic.

Honestly, that should be an option in general.

I'll be going off topic for a while, as well as leaving the island, but bear with me.

Back in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the Bundeswehr in Germany had significant retention issues. Conscripts were a dime a dozen, my dad was one of them, but they couldn't retain, or in some cases even attract officers or NCOs. A massive investigation ordered by the minister of defense at the time, Helmut Schmidt, showed that the Bundeswehr was seen as not being conducive to a post-military career, chiefly due to a lack of transferrable skills. As a consequence, the Bundeswehr went about setting up two dedicated Bundeswehr universities, one in Hamburg and one in Munich, at the other end of the country. The aim was to take candidates fresh out of school, give them a university education that, while related to their military career, was not military in its own right, and upon graduation send them off to either officer, or in some cases NCO training, followed by a certain fixed service term. Whilst it didn't completely resolve the retention issues. it certainly alleviated the issues considerably.

Now, I don't advocate for a "Defense Forces University" to be set up, but I certainly do believe that a combination of a sponsored non-military preparatory education and a fixed military service term aimed at reinforcing the lessons from the preparatory education would be something worthwhile for Ireland. How this should be implemented is a different matter entirely, and probably a topic for a thread of its own, but it is certainly an interesting concept.

Most cadet trained officers receive third level training across a range of degrees. It was mostly Galway University but may be at other Universities as well. Nco's also get civilian validation as they advance through their careers. J.P.Morgan were over canvassing for clients for their career opportunities. My son an ex- Captain BA has a career with them based in Europe.

Our problems began in the 1990's with a swinging reduction in Establishment of almost 5000 personnel and a Brigade deletion. Despite more than doubling Fleet size the Naval Establishment was reduced to 1050 or thereabouts. Nine ships need 810 personnel to be continually available for operations. Then you must man HQ's, Logistics, Administration, Dockyard, Transport, Base Medical Unit, Three base Messes, and provide for Daily Security Duties.

The direct responsibility lies with the Secretariat .