3 New Navy Vessels for Irish Naval Service

Nah

Think the have a few battlecruisers and an aircraft carrier in mind 🤪

Any opinions on the rumour of the MRV getting more shooty?

said the same thing over on the other place.

the FREMM? The FDI I could kind of see but the FREMM? Very ambitious by the French if they were going for that, interesting to see if true the Poles jumping the U.K., but let’s be honest the U.K. just doesn’t have capacity to build anything for the rest of the decade, hence the suggestion that if they win the Norwegian order they will have to give up one of their current build 26s.

At this stage though the scale of rumours must be pretty unique for us with all three services seemingly getting shopping lists in.

Nope, 20 years of a procurement hell, its got to be up there as one of our worst/most dragged out projects even for us. Either way, apart from needing to get orders in, we also need the Civil works needs to be taken in hand for the base infrastructure as well. As for the Euro Arms companies, I think they would have had a better idea than the state for a while now, all they need to know is how big is the Credit Card.

It will be interesting if we end up "shotgunning" our purchases across the EU, though not sure would we be better just picking one national focus (ie France or Italy) and locking into them?

The H&W works for the RFAs could end up been a lot smaller than 1st taught with all major work carried out in Navantia yard in spain.

They are FREMMs. FREMM was co-developed by France and Italy. 18 are in service between them.

lnterestingly though, the new Constellation-Class (FFG-X) Guided Missile Frigate of the US Navy is also a licenced FREMM derivative.

I wonder if the USN will be cut off from the programme? I know Italy won't under Meloni, but you wouldn't know what an increasingly hawkish Macron might do.

Could we see a former oil support ship been bought in the next 12 months?

https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0321/1503209-new-maritime-security-unit/

I doubt it, if this is anything more than a can kicker then it will be the upgrade for the 60s that’s been talked about.

I'm going to have to disagree here. I do believe that the Irish Navy is going to need an "in-house" seabed surveillance asset. For starters, those three ships have a pretty full operational schedule already, so I doubt they'd be able to squeeze in a DoD tasking at short notice. Secondly, because these are civilian owned ships, they are an inherent security risk, both with regards to their crews and with regards to the lack of any secure communications or planning facilities. Such a ship might have to act on intelligence that Ireland got from sources that are best left unexposed, and having a civilian crew just provides too many risks for accidental leaks. Also, the Tom Crean or Celtic Explorer suddenly going dark on AIS would inevitably raise suspicion, whilst the same would just be par for the course for a naval vessel. Finally, there could very well be the need for said surveillance asset to take a more active role with regards to threats to underwater infrastructure or general "surprises" found on the seabed, and for that you just need a navy asset.

I'm not saying that the Navy shouldn't get suitable undersea surveillance vessels. In fact they should get several, if we had people to operate them.

But that solution would be years away. We have a problem, quite literally, today. These Russian ships are stretching the Air Corps ability to track them and are also drawing in NATO surface and subsurface assets.

The threat to the undersea infrastructure is clear and present. In my opinion, all other considerations should be secondary and those State ships ought to be re-tasked immediately to counter that threat. Any non-Irish crew who don't pass security, should be removed.

And consideration should be made to refitting Granuaile rather than selling her. She should be modernised and commissioned into the Navy as a surveillance and support ship. At 80 metres and 2,600 tonnes, she is designed for heavy seas operations and specifically for tasks like surveying and offshore data collection. She is also helicopter capable, one operation lacking in all other Naval ships at present. She would do ably as an undersea cable protection asset until purpose built vessels can be built.

Looks like design work for her replacement should be underway, but nothing out to tender yet, they had planned for her replacement around 2028 it seems.

Mostly the UK up until now, with the ships either being Ex RN (the Corvette's, the Minesweeers, the Peacocks), or built in the UK, (P50/P60s), then there were the home built ones (P20's P31) and now the couple of Kiwi boats.