The Comedy of the Irish Defence Forces

[engineer]

It really is time to give up on this largesse/pretence. We have about 10000 civil servants playing soldiers sucking about 1billion Euros from us every year.

With the funding level and current state of play the whole charade would last about 4 hours in the field.

Navy - Antique

Ships are 12years out of date. Do we need formal Commodore-Captain-Crew; RN model for fisheries and coastguard ? I say wind it up; enlarge current customs role and align with Gardai. Our vessels would be in deep shit if confronted even with very outdated ASW.

Air Force - The true largesse

A dozen (?) 'combat' helis - for what ? Great lads for training commercial pilots, pissing money away and the odd crash. Close it; hand the heli resource to the Irish Coastguard - lets get some value.

Sell Baldonnell to Ryanair for 100mill - the 'Stansted of Dublin'. Fixed wing aircraft in the aircorp now used as junket taxis for politicoes. Dont wind me up; charter market is beyond saturation.

Army - Why so big and gutless ?

The army has now adopted the role of the old Civil Defence volunteer organisation. Reduce down to a small battalion sized group of combat specialists.

We are way out of our league here; infantry need serious tracked arty., this needs air superiority, this needs launch capacity; Navy ?

Time to forget jobs for the boys and realise the military world is out of our reach.

[POL]

but tell us how you really feel

[Corcaigh32]

Our rangers won the World Special Forces Championships though. We are a sovereign state (if not nation). As a sovereign state we should have defence forces. None of us believe that if, for the sake of argument, an invading force popped in we could hold them out for longer than a couple of days to a week at most. Is that an argument for doing away with all our defence forces? Of course not. We still need armed forces for patrolling the border until we get rid of it, we need armed forces as all other nations do to deal with crisis situations and by all accounts our rangers are the best in the world at it.

We need a navy - we are an island nation (pending the re-integration of the national territory that is) and whether it is for fisheries protection, drugs enforcement, human trafficking or whatever it is - we need a navy. No one expects the Americans to park one of their Atlantic fleets off Cobh for our navy to take on so to argue they would be in trouble against outdated ASW again only becomes relevant if we are invaded.

Similarly the antiquated nature of our fixed wing air corps only becomes relevant if we are invaded. What is stopping us having the silver swallows fougas or whatever they are these days as a ceremonial squadron? No one expects them to take on a squadron of tornadoes. However, we should beef up our helicopter capacity, for air sea rescue, for garda support, air ambulance etc etc........in particular as we still need to call RAF bases on the west coast of Britain in order to get 200 to 300 miles off the Irish coast.

[poulgorm]

Is it Costa Rica abolished their defence forces? By all accounts, they are doing better than most of the neighbouring countries in the area.

We could not abolish them entirely: we need helicopters (and more of them) and we should have many more smaller, faster naval ships for patrolling the coastline: but the army could be trimmed back.

Just keep enough to keep The DUP (and their ilk)at bay!

[Lapsy Pa]

How about, in future any drug seizures that take place in Irish waters we keep to ourselves, sell them and use the money made to improve our Navy, Army and Air Force.

[longbigandjuicy]

How about, in future any drug seizures that take place in Irish waters we keep to ourselves, sell them and use the money made to improve our Navy, Army and Air Force.

I like your style

[NathanBevan]

Let's just claim that we're part of America. They always claim they're part of Ireland.

[Cannabis]

if we are invaded again it will be a rejuvenated almighty ra that saves us not a bunch of fags who couldnt handle the weaving cert

[engineer]

Our rangers won the World Special Forces Championships though. We are a sovereign state (if not nation). As a sovereign state we should have defence forces. None of us believe that if, for the sake of argument, an invading force popped in we could hold them out for longer than a couple of days to a week at most. Is that an argument for doing away with all our defence forces? Of course not. We still need armed forces for patrolling the border until we get rid of it, we need armed forces as all other nations do to deal with crisis situations and by all accounts our rangers are the best in the world at it.

We need a navy - we are an island nation (pending the re-integration of the national territory that is) and whether it is for fisheries protection, drugs enforcement, human trafficking or whatever it is - we need a navy. No one expects the Americans to park one of their Atlantic fleets off Cobh for our navy to take on so to argue they would be in trouble against outdated ASW again only becomes relevant if we are invaded.

Similarly the antiquated nature of our fixed wing air corps only becomes relevant if we are invaded. What is stopping us having the silver swallows fougas or whatever they are these days as a ceremonial squadron? No one expects them to take on a squadron of tornadoes. However, we should beef up our helicopter capacity, for air sea rescue, for garda support, air ambulance etc etc........in particular as we still need to call RAF bases on the west coast of Britain in order to get 200 to 300 miles off the Irish coast.

Well aligned on the Rangers, I said a a battalion sized group of specialists (I was thinking Rangers). Did a google on that world championship thing, found nothing, what are you on about ? You reckon proper special forces are pricking around ?

Your post asks more questions than a muslim in a new york deli...

I never said the state should not have an army. But somehow you say we as a sov state should have an army, is that mandated ? (or gut feel)

The Gardai do the border gig.

'Crisis situations' is another fraud, We need a civil defense type operation like I said. A complete armed forces to support crisis, f*cking hell - the costs dont bear thinking. All them Javelins & Steyrs, nicely oiled; when shovels and gritters would suffice ?

We need a Navy ? - We need harpoon missiles, phalynx, rhine-metal canons... Bollix - we need to scare off carlos and his cocaine yacht, ferdinand the dodgy trawlerman out of bilboa and to pull the odd brandy ridden crosshaven tosser from near death. Navys are for scrapping navys or taking control of another nations waters. We need a decent coastguard.

We are a million miles apart on fixed wing my friend. The silver swallows would have been antiques in the Falklands, christ knows how much the spare parts are costing them. You see the silver swallows, get a tingle down your spine ? They should have held onto that oul spitfire.