If Russia invaded us in the morning, who would come to our aid?

As far as I'm aware the geography hasn't changed.

So your logic is the US with all the latest tech and hardware, doesn't have the range to bypass Ireland or support itself without Ireland. Even though they do this all around the globe.

But the Russians do with their broken down fleet and aircraft which has to be towed around the place. They would have to get past all Nato forces in the west. Against the tech that has current bleed them to a standstill a short distance from their border.

I'm thinking the geography is still against them.

Maybe you think someone gets out with a pen knife.

https://www.livescience.com/64376-explorer-deepest-dive-atlantic-ocean.html

What are you talking about.

References to, and language referring to atomic energy and military neutrality were changed.

Every voting age person in the country got a printed explanation.

Shannon was long enough to be an emergency alternate for the Space Shuttle.

It would help if it made sense.

Feels like it was intended as segue into something else about NATO, eu or such. If so that's a really irritating way to post on a forum.

A topic about Ireland military obligations or defence position in EU would be interesting topic in it's own right. But you don't lead with "invasion".

Yeah, so be it. If you voted "no" on any of those EU referenda you are a Eurosceptic. Where am I unconditionally "worshipping" anything? I just pointed out you personally by your own posts don't rate Ireland's EU membership or indeed the EU itself very highly. That is colouring your judgement of its impact on the countries' security. So you just dismiss it from the conversation sarcastically. Also we can only go by your posting history, my memory of it is the default After Hours CAIMHO rubbish (you know your self, Eurocrats, ze Germans running Ireland, for what died the sons of Róisín?) when the EU rears its head.

What are you taling about "article 13", article 13 of what? Is it Article 16 of "Northern Ireland" protocol of the Brexit Withdrawal agreement the EU made with the UK? Doesn't surprise me you were "shocked" (gasp) with EU almost using it for a single product (vaccines) in a crisis (Covid) when the UKs fuckery over same could be argued to have led to preventable early deaths of EU citizens. Where's the peep from you about the UKs almost endless game playing over that article? Seemed like every other week in 2021 they were going to trigger it. Indeed they have laws slowly wending their way through parliament right now to abrogate the agreement, with support of possibly a majority of the ruling party. It hasn't gone away you know, just on the back burner because there's bigger fish to fry currently for all parties.

As regards Lisbon we were kind of assured via loopholes added that we don't have to put ourselves out & do much to support others in event of an attack (we can't do much anyway can we?). However there are other countries in the EU that are not as hostile to idea of all military force + use of "hard power" that take a somewhat different view of these things. IMO a few of them would not leave it at that if Ireland or indeed any other EU member were invaded by Russia as per your scenario, even if we either won't or can't reciprocate and help them in the same circumstances.

The thread is indirectly about the EU. It is your fever dream about Russia invading the country and whether anyone will help us. Our EU membership is obviously related. Again its your personal opinion of the EU that's kind of letting you down here.

I actually think this is an interesting question and there's no really clear cut answer

So for Russia to invade us "tomorrow" kind of skips over a few important questions of "why" and "how"

Practically speaking, it wouldn't be particularly easy for Russia to invade Ireland currently. There's a lot of open ocean between both countries, and several unfriendly countries in between.

Russia would have to launch an invasion using it's navy and airborne units. Only a few of its operational naval vessels are capable of operating at that range, and not all of those are optimised for carrying troops

They would also need to resupply any forces they have from Russia which would require significant air lift capacity which Russia doesn't really have. Their military is based on the Soviet Union doctrine of a land war in Europe. Most of their resupply lines are via rail or truck, as we're seeing in Ukraine these are vulnerable to attack

There's also the surprise factor, or rather total lack of surprise. Despite some portrayals, I don't think many modern wars have really come as a surprise to anybody.

Remember for months before the Ukraine war, there was a massive military buildup in Russia and Belarus under the guise of exercises. Russia state TV was filled with rhetoric about how Ukraine is a fake nation which is ruled by Nazi's put in place by NATO, and Russia has the right to militarily intervene to "liberate" Ukraine and secure her own borders

This historically is pretty standard for Russia, and many other nations. For example, before the start of WWII, Germany had built up a large military force on the Polish border and their propaganda machine was churning out stories of border skirmishes and violent attacks on ethnic Germans by the Polish army

Add to this the fact that NATO intelligence services are closely watching any Russian fleet movements means the chances of a surprise attack tomorrow are almost nil

So while I think there's an element of "I don't believe it" when a war breaks out, I don't think anyone can legitimately say they never saw it coming

However, let's take 2 scenarios, the surprise attack, and not so surprising attack

The surprise attack doesn't end well for us. Regardless of it's military woes, Russia could probably scrape together enough naval and airborne troops to easily outmatch the Irish defence forces

Their aircraft carrier and missile cruisers would destroy the Irish naval forces and troops would be landed at airports and government buildings. Landing points would be secured, additional troops would be disembarked and the country would be overrun. Beyond a few skirmishes at military bases there wouldn't be much of a fight

Our government would probably surrender immediately in order to stop civilian casualties and would quickly be replaced with something more friendly to Russia

Ireland would be effectively under military occupation

And then what...

So it's worth considering a few things here. First, for NATO and the EU, there's the optics of a democratic European nation and an EU member being crushed under their noses.

There's also a strategic problem, particularly for the UK and US, in having a belligerent rival nation controlling an island from which they can launch air and naval attacks on NATO and Atlantic shipping

However, they probably don't want to start a war with Russia over it

So how do you persuade the Russian military to leave Ireland?

I imagine the first step would be to form an Irish government in exile and have them request military assistance from NATO

NATO could respond with a naval and air blockade of the island in order to prevent Russia from resupplying their forces here.

After that, there would probably be a buildup of UK and NATO forces in Northern Ireland (assuming that didn't get invaded too).

There would probably be an effort to start some irregular warfare using whatever remains of the Irish Defence forces and NATO special forces. This would be used as a pretext to launch some sort of peacekeeping or stability mission to suppress the Russian military forces

The end result would be that Ireland would be under military occupation by NATO forces engaged in a sort of frozen war with the Russian military

Scenario 2, where Ireland is expecting an attack probably ends a bit better, depending on your viewpoint

Let's say tomorrow, Kremlin propaganda and nationalist bloggers start talking about how Ireland is a sham country ruled by elites and operating at the beck and call of NATO and the EU. They start talking about how Ireland should be next for "De-nazification" and how the Irish people are crying out to be liberated by the proud Russian military

In parallel, the Russian navy begins operating close to Irish waters under the guise of exercises

At some point, someone in NATO intelligence is probably going to have a chat with the Irish government and tell them they have reason to believe that these threats are real and Russia imminently intends to invade

Crisis talks will be held within government, and discussions will be had with European and American governments to see how serious this is and what support can be offered

The simplest and easiest deterrent would probably be for Ireland to immediately apply for NATO membership. This will require some soul searching within the government since it would effectively end any form of Irish neutrality in European conflicts

However the threat of imminent invasion by an overwhelming military force would probably speed up their decision making

So Ireland formally and rapidly applies to join NATO. I don't think any NATO countries are hugely against Irish membership, but there would likely be some political concessions required from the Irish government

At the same time that Russian fleet stationed near Ireland would be in an interesting spot. Chances are there would be at least one US Navy carrier group stationed nearby to check they're keeping in good health

The Russians could either call the whole thing off or decide to invade before Ireland joins NATO.

If they exercise option 1 then a fragile peace has been restored, Ireland remains a sovereign nation but is now part of NATO with all the associated responsibilities regarding hosting military bases and GDP spending targets. Given our somewhat bizarre GDP growth, I imagine we'd either fall short or end up with military spending amounting to 30% of government budget

If the Russians play roulette and go for the fast invasion then it's kind of like Scenario 1 where we get overrun. In this case however the NATO forces nearby would probably get concerned at the massive missile barrages being launched by Russian ships and might decide not to ask questions

At the very least they would probably to try and shoot down some of the missiles, they could be targeted at NATO territory after all. At worst, we might see the biggest naval battle since the Jutland. Bring popcorn

After that, assuming both sides don't immediately launch the nukes, there'll be some very tense discussions with the Russians being unhappy their fleet got sank (let's be realistic, they probably wouldn't win) and NATO being a tad grumpy about them trying to attack a friendly nation which recently applied for membership

Any diplomat who manages to defuse that situation peacefully would deserve every Novel Peace Prize for all eternity IMO

Maybe, we'd still face a shortage of experienced soldiers. One of the things Ukraine had going for it in the early days of the war was a huge reserve of former soldiers who had combat experience from the fighting in the Donbas region before the war

We don't really have that same reserve and while I think the defence forces have punched above their weight a few times, they've never faced a mechanised army with an overwhelming majority in firepower

On top of that we'd (in theory) be facing Russian naval infantry and airborne troops, which are some of their most elite forces (in theory)

In general I'm assuming the war in Ukraine didn't happen and the Russian forces are at their prewar strength. At this point their forces have been hollowed out so badly that weight of numbers is their only advantage

Ireland would also face all of the same problems that Ukraine is currently facing with missile attacks but worse. To my knowledge we have no anti aircraft systems, so Russia wouldn't even need to use their hypersonic missiles, those garbage Iranian drones they bought would be able to destroy our infrastructure pretty quickly

So any real resistance the defence forces can mount will really depend on the amount of support we can get from allies. That would take time to organise since our remaining forces would probably have to be trained up on NATO systems

We also have the problem that we're surrounded by water. Makes us difficult to invade by land, but also makes resupply in volume difficult and easy to interdiction by an invader

That also flows both ways however, as I mentioned the Russians would be operating at the very edge of their airlift capacity. And I don't see any Western European nations allowing Russian resupply flights through their airspace

Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the Swedes or the Finns didn't send out those shiny new F-35s they're buying to check if those Russian supply planes are experiencing engine trouble and if they aren't, they would rectify that situation