Interesting articles

Paul has become more unhinged than usual in his recent dail ranting. He knows this is his last bite of the dail cherry, and he it trying hard to fly his hard left flag before next election. SF pulled in double the quota last time and could easily have held a 2nd seat, a mistake they won't make again. Last time round, it took the elimination of his party colleague to get him elected at the 8th count.

The vote to send a NS ship to the med is the way of the future, and it would have been unanimous, except for PBP. We should trust both houses of our government enough. It seems PBP does not. It relies on Russia and China to approve our foreign policy decisions.

You're right about WW2 of course and Norway's bitter experience of occupation and subjugation.

But in the post-war era, Norway also had to contend with the major headache of security for its massive oil fields and other natural and environmental resources, in what is a big, sparsely populated and often inhospitable land. For those reasons, the mutuality of NATO membership made good sense to Norway and it's people.

But, in these times, the consequences of Article 5 Treaty obligations have never been more stark, or closer to being enacted on a broad scale, than they are right now with Russia's hegemonic behaviour.

This means, in plain terms, if the Baltics or Poland or Finland or Romania suffered direct aggression (even cyber) Norway's full military resources could be called upon to fight on land, sea and air to protect them. And that's not nothing.

In my opinion, in Ireland's current disastrous state of strength and readiness, our priority must be to build capabilities and to seek bespoke partnership solutions for our security priorities in cyber, airspace and the EEZ.

In short, we couldn't really add much to NATO at the moment and we wouldn't be able for all of its commitments. It's also a stick that is used to beat any argument about Defence/non-alignment in Ireland so would be far better to frame the discussion with not joining NATO as a given. Certainly not without a specific referendum on it.

FFS, why is it that it seems everyone thinks the answer to housing is take land/houses/barracks from the DF? How many vacant/disused units does Kildare council have on the books that they might look to first?

Time to park some tanks outside the council offices!

DF

The ‘Norway type’ approach (soon to be joined by Sweden and Finland - no slouches either on the UN / humanitarian piece) should be articulated, as the usual loud mouths will hog the airways. The issue as I see it is will the Government take an approach in terms of where we should be headed- in a nutshell who will present the argument that what we are currently doing is hypocritical, self serving, failing to meet our obligations as a sovereign state plus as a member of a wider international community which massively benefits us.

I see the air corps have on there social media they have personal training in CSAR at a red flag excercise in the USA

There is huge increase in P8s patrolling irish controlled air space lately. Norways P8s did sevevral patrols last week around the island of ireland just outside our 12 mile limit

Just thinking about this mornings incident, first is it because of the sensitive equipment she has onboard that they didn’t want any emergency personnel to do an inspection or might she have been armed and they wanted to avoid the diplomatic issues? Second with all the patrols in our EEZ and this incident, I wonder what conversations would be had with our government if this or something like this had ended badly?

IMHO once the two new aircraft arrive it should be an issue if they are not as close to 100 % on maritime patrol as makes no difference. Instead of ferrying folks about, they should be doing the job they were purchased for. The government should pony up for a new government jet and transporters (and probably additional maritime aircraft) and do the job properly.

I haven't looked, but I'll bet a pound to your penny that somewhere, not many years old, is a Stephen Collins article to the effect that 'Ireland's neutrality and peace making foreign policy is the envy of the World'.

'The Irish Times Opinion - If you don't like it, we have others'

If DPER here about this they will try cancel the Casa order

DPER "Could we pay a cancellation fee?.....and by "we" we mean the DF pay out of their own budget?"

Yes, I understand that they offered one when they were new in 1874.

We were never in the ASW game. the original MPA Kingairs had nothing but a photographer at a bubble window, and some bright stripes. The most they could do from a tech POV was top cover, i.e fly high enough near an incident that helis at scene had comms to HQ. ASW was something other people did, because we were "neutral" and the main enemy, the PIRA, did not use subs. The arrival of the Casa, and the ability to drop marker flares (using the same tech used for sonobuoys) was the closest we came to it.