i read i think it was in the indo a few weeks ago that the government was considering bringing in a squadron of dutch fighters for the main eu meeting to provide air cover in insence hirring in muscle what does anyone think of this idea?
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Dutch air force on hire to Ireland
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To be quite honest I have no problem with this. The fact of the matter is, that adequate air cover will be neccessary over the course of the summit. The same will apply when Mr Bush pay's us all a visit in June.
Ireland cannot provide this air cover... so the question is, who will. What will more than likely happen is that for the EU summit a European air force, be it Dutch, French, German or our "buddies" the RAF, will provide that service. However something tells me that if the RAF were to provide the air cover it would cause a lot of pother in the usual quarters. It would also be a little embarrising to our "republican" goverment. So what you heard my be correct, we have little diplomatic problems with the Dutch.
What will may see happen in the case of the Bush visit is more obvious. The US will provide the air cover. However don't be at all surprised if you find the goverments attempting to soften this contensious issue by declaring that the US fighter pilots have Irish blood in their veins. Mark my word!
In a related topic, did anyone see "Questions and Answers" last night? I have forgotten the man's name, but the Fine Gael spokesperson on foreign affairs, was giving a ( forgive me my mind has gone utterly blank) a Finna Fail Minister a hard time over Irelands lack of a decent air defence force. He muted buying or renting a "few" fighter jets to protect our air space. The Finna Fail Minster utterly rejected his proposal as utterly silly, on the grounds of the huge costs that would be involved.
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Fouga,
Hi Just new to this forum. I'm really surprised that the IAC has no Fast Jet Air Combat/strike capability. How do the IAC Feel about this? from what I can see on their website Only the SF250 is weapons capable. I somehow think that there would be quite a boost in morale if the IAC were to get say 12 hawk 200's or equivilent for comparativly little money.
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instead of wasting our money buying PC-9s, we culd get 8-10 F-16s from the duch or belgians, who are bothing trying to sell recently updated aircraft. this wuld give us a pretty good air defense force for a pittance. i know our pilots wuld need to be trained, but there is a surplus of training capacity in several countries, allowing to pick where we send our lads for the best value
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