Ireland - now considered one of most vulnerable countries in the EU (defense wise)

A lot of people are very short sighted and don't appear to grasp how things change.

At the end of the cold war it looked like Russia had come in from the cold.

Then over the years partially through US stupidity, apathy, negligence and Russians love of hard men we are now where we are.

Recently we have advent of the old isolationist America idea under Trump.

Over last 25 years we have had huge rise in islamist ideology, growing numbers of followers in Europe and if anything we have opened that door in this country.

The likes of al-qeada and ISIS sympathisers couldn't a give rats ass that we didn't invade anyone, that we aren't in NATO.

See Swedish attacks as prime example.

They see us gleefully welcoming US presidents and being welcomed by them to the White House every year, they see us hosting half of the US top 100 multinationals.

How do we protect ourselves if someone decides to carry out major terrorist attack?

Can we even spot an aircraft that has been hijacked in our airspace?

And if we do think there is hijacking, do we just ring RAF to kindly take a look for us.

We don't have to have F22s, F35, Typhoons, but something better than a turboprop trainer might be handy.

And if there is attack on the ground do we hope for more passers by like an Irish woman and Brazilian man to step up.

We rely on a few Garda armed response and a few Rangers in the Curragh.

Do we even have any proper intelligence services and please don't tell us how good we were at infiltrating Republicans 25 years ago as that is about much use as the runway behind you or the sky above you when your plane is in trouble.

And a lot of the same people claiming no need for Irish defense are over on other threads telling us how the world is turning to shyte and there are millions of people that will want to come to Europe.

Maybe the throw your arms around the world brigade hold sway in Ireland, but the likelihood is European countries, fellow EU countries, that are already going right or are right will say fook that for a game of cowboys. Sooner or later the Med will be patrolled and European militaries will be beefed up, with even creation of a EU one if EU lasts the course, to protect Europe.

And we will have to step up.

What makes this worse is we appear to the outside world as this supposed massive economy, as a massive tax haven for multinationals, but yet expect others to ensure our security.

As they say it is all a bit Irish.

It doesn't matter why terrorist groups were formed.

You have people that share nothing but a common belief system with the ones being bombed to decide to slaughter innocent people in some Western country.

You are making excuses for the likes of the terrorists that slaughter young children that were concert goers in Manchester, people out enjoying a gig in Paris, people going to work in London, Madrid or people enjoying an evening troll by seafront in Nice.

I can't and will not go down rabbit hole about immigrants as I have been warned about posting on the topic on other threads.

One of the lickspittles will probably go runnning about that comment.

€250k each but if you bought 50 you'd probably get that down to €200k. So €10m you'd have a fairly serious deterrent and extensive surveillance system. An operator could run 2 at a time so low staffing requirements. If I were a fighter jet acting the bollox off our coast I wouldn't be too cocky if there was a good chance of one of these loitering somewhere nearby.

They could be used for aerial monitoring of criminal activity too. Assign one in an area where there is an incident, send up a replacement to fill in for it. You could have 30 in the air and 20 on the ground at any one time. 30 fairly invisible units, 60 rockets ready at all times covering a relatively small area, scary prospect.

There's no risk/reward in invading Ireland, what exactly would be the point, just bad PR and no resources and a bunch of pissed off civilians/paras

And why would they attack us?

In our history only the Danes and British have attacked us.

It doesn't matter a fook why they were formed and it is totally outside our control to prevent them being formed or existing.

When the fook are Irish people going to cop on we are tiny in the grand scheme of things.

We can't solve the Middle East problems, no more than we can solve global warming (something the greens and environmentalists can't seem to comprehend)

We just need to make sure we can deal with some of the consequences that might visit our shores.

Our neutrality is trotted out as something great as if we can swan in and act as great some neutral intermediary and everyone will listen.

Fact is we have never been truly neutral.

In WWII we allowed Allied aircraft cross our territory, we returned down Allied airmen to Britain whereas we interred German airmen.

We depended on Allied resources to protect our shipping.

In cold war we were always on the Western side.

Yeah we let Aeroflot use Shannon, but that was about it.

And today we are in EU which has 22 members of NATO with another to join i.e. Sweden.

The only non NATO members then will be Austria, Ireland, Malta.

We are economically so linked to US it is beyond comprehension.

Remember the old joke about the 51st state?

which nuclear Armed Country is that?

how much billions would we need to spend up stop a nuke from

Air or a submarine?