Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

Not pointless. It shows that we are ready to defend ourselves if needed. Nobody will help us if we don't ourselves.

So if we were attacked unprovoked in the morning the US and UK would stand idle? No chance.

Turkey is in NATO, has the second largest standing military force in NATO, along with a massive Airforce.

Good ole Mutually Assured Destruction doing its thing.

In life nothing is 0% chance. Is this your idea of defence?

'our idea of defence is hoping the guys who subjugated us for 800 years come to our rescue and won’t spend more despite bumper tax harvests and ignoring how we were already attacked by Russians who continue to float of our coast while all we can do is send fishermen in their direction'

We were already attacked by the Russians? When and Where? musta missed that one lol

What's your idea of defense? a handful of jets and a tiny land army along with a miniscule navy? The harsh reality is vs a modern army they wouldn't last pissing time on there own.

Jesus wept talk about being stuck in the past, regardless of your "patriotic" views, the fact remains unchanged the guys next door who subjugated us would be the first ones too our defense along with the US in the event Ireland was attacked unprovoked.

What do you think will change should we get jets ?

We have invested in our navy and have warships and yet the Russian Navy completely ignores our navy and does as it likes lol.

Why isnt the Irish navy sent out to confront the Russians rather than fishing boats? "Police them" seeing as you all love that word.

Your clutching at straws and at the back of it all you know what your saying is pure nonsense your not being patriotic your being stupid.

Taking your reasoning to its logical conclusion we shouldn't have any defence forces. I don't agree we should and that should include some modern capibility including jets, modern armoured vehicles, missiles and an effective modern navy. Our army would need a territorial reserve too. Enough to make it not worth the while for anyine to attack us. It's not too much to ask especially the way the world is becoming more unpredicaible. If that's stupid I'm guilty.

Yes. It's very small.

The UK would be considered a very small army, and there reserves alone are nearly 5 times the size of our standing army.. to put things in perspective..

And yet people on here are confident that 10-15 jets 7300 soldiers will make the difference... im sorry lads but your only coddin yerselves.

Irrelevant on the global stage.

You did a whole load of shouting and said absolutely nothing there.

Again its a simple question what threat? The facts are we are a thriving neutral country that hasn't had a major incident in decades.

Another simple question where exactly is it you think this "government with balls" should be leading us??

You are all screaming for jets but again.... for what? if we got a fleet of jets in the morning what would change exactly? what would we have that we dont already have now outside of a needless expense and shiny jets?

If the threats ye are concerned about are so high and severe why arent we fast tracking into NATO like Finland and Sweden did when faced with real threat? Those countries realized they cant stand alone and they are far bigger militaries than Ireland yet here we are too good to accept help from the UK or anyone else.

According to those on here we need to "grow up and defend ourselves" and not depend on other nations for security which is hilarious really when you think about it.

The answer is simple because these threats are not realistic for Ireland the likelihood of us ever being attacked is astronomically low unless you are utterly delusional.

So you think we should have a navy that should be able to confront.. ill take the most recent example the Russian navy? And be ready to engage them if they do not comply?

is that what your asking for?

Policing means to make someone forcibly leave the area... In short you are saying leave now or we will open fire. Terrible idea.

Do you understand what you are asking for in these scenarios?

If I had the concern that you for what ever reason have... that we need a major shift in military doctrine.

The first port of call would be applying to join NATO, and fulfilling any requirements for membership as Ireland as a nation is incapable of defending itself from a nation that has the ability to project power to attack it, that is a fact we have no industry we have no resources, small landmass, low pool of man power to draw from. No ability to fight a prolonged fight.

I would ask for NATO assests to be located in Ireland, i would aim to work with the RAF and RN to implement a strategy to jointly cover both the UK and Ireland and hopefully have US assests based in Shannon and allow to facilitate US aircraft.

Then you would have what you want full fleshed out military defence with ultra deterrence from everything.

But there are absolutely no threats to us as of now to warrant such a major shift in policy and military doctrine.

But this idea of the DF's being able to stand alone and defend us from all threats... its just delusional and simply not feasible they are what they are and we are never going invest enough to have a fully functional stand alone military with war fighting capability because we simply don't need it.

In short if we never spent another penny on the DF's we would be no worse off for it.