Kevin Myers spot on regarding the Defence Forces

[GoneToTheCanner]

Perhaps if they standardised more of the vehicle fleet instead of scattering the requirement among so many different manufacturers. It must be a nightmare keeping track of spares and making sure the right stuff gets to the right vehicle. Does anyone ever check to see if spares can be used across the fleet, such as servicing spares like filters and bulbs and so on?
regards
GttC

[luchi]

Perhaps if they standardised more of the vehicle fleet instead of scattering the requirement among so many different manufacturers. It must be a nightmare keeping track of spares and making sure the right stuff gets to the right vehicle. Does anyone ever check to see if spares can be used across the fleet, such as servicing spares like filters and bulbs and so on?
regards
GttC

I really don't think spares are as big an issue as Budget.
For Logs
We have
the lovely new Scanias with no drivers.
The Scania Drops - all over seas - in a country with no Scania dealership or other backup.
The Iveco Drops - ageing away
The Man 4x2 delapidated and ready for boarding.

The other vehicles would be considered troop transport or tactical.

[Tadpole]

Luchi,
If you buy or lease aircraft it still comes out of the same budget and fights for cash againest other equipment.
The point is if purchase will provide better short / long term value then leased aircraft.
Considering one round trip to Africa for troop rotations, 757 etc, costs up to €250,000 and provides no immediate or stand by support there is certainly scope to look at a purchase purely based on cash already being spent on lease.

[luchi]

Luchi,
If you buy or lease aircraft it still comes out of the same budget and fights for cash againest other equipment.
The point is if purchase will provide better short / long term value then leased aircraft.
Considering one round trip to Africa for troop rotations, 757 etc, costs up to €250,000 and provides no immediate or stand by support there is certainly scope to look at a purchase purely based on cash already being spent on lease.

But why do we need to do either from the defence budget?

It was said earlier the point of having a Defence Force is to protect Ireland.
If the UN or EU want us to depoly else where then should the cost of such a deployment not be bourn by the overseas aid budget?
Justification could also be made for Ryanair or Airlingus to have in their fleet aircraft that could be used by any Irish overseas aid agency. It may even be commercially viable.
As it stands these aircraft serve little purpose in local defence. In light of other equipment issues it is very difficult to see justification.

[California Tanker]

But why do we need to do either from the defence budget?

Justification could also be made for Ryanair or Airlingus to have in their fleet aircraft that could be used by any Irish overseas aid agency.

If they're registered in Ireland, could the DF not just commandeer them for a day or two?

NTM

[irishrgr]

Meyers article

Well I agree to a point with Meyers article, he's right. The DF can't defend the country and honestly in the absence of a threat why would the country want to spend the money? Like it or not, we have to live within our means. Having said that, there is room for improvement (there always is) but that has to fall out from defense policy which is set by the govt. In Ireland this has to be considered in context of a country that has only published two (or three I can't rememeber) White Papers on Defense, all within the last 10 years. So essentially since the foundation of the state, there has been no national military strategy aside from the usual speeches and general political ramblings. If you read defense budgets from the 1970's on, were it not for the UN, the DF would probably be still carrying .303's and wearing wool uniforms. The UN mission was the only "agent for change" in the DF.

The current White Papers address the DF overseas commitment to peacekeeping/ISAF/EUFOR/UN (insert entity here) as an important part of the national military policy. Great, but money talks and like many things, Ireland wants the trappings of a credible DF but won't actually pay for it. So we compromise, beg, borrow, rent or lease when we have to go overseas and we have what we have. The sad part of this, is that, at the end of this decision process there are privates out there in random foreign countries who may have to pay for this national inertia the hard way.

Ireland has always had what I like to call a "hysterical neutrality" mentality. We go to great pains to show our neutrality and not join alliances that might be seen as warlike (NATO, etc). But honestly, in the world scheme, does it really matter? I don't think the decision makers in the various world capitals go "Phew, thank God the Irish didn't join NATO, otherwise we'd all be fcuked". So we parade our excellent soldiers out on Easter weekend, etc, then send them back to the barracks while we scream bloody murder about prisions, hospitals, immigration, all while proud of our neutral stance. We love the idea of neutrality but don't actually want to fiscally commit to it like the Swiss did. "Ah, sure, who'd invade us anyhow, besides, the match is starting....pass us me pint there Martin" And so it goes.

The Irish people (and their elected officals) have the DF they want whether we like it or not. If it wasn't what the irish people wanted, they would demand changes. Everyone loves our blue beret clad lads and lasses handing out sweets and playing football, plays great in the media but if they were worried about the fact we have to call another country to do a MEDEVAC for one of our own soldiers, they would be screaming at their TD's. Having seen first hand the consequences of waiting hours for one NATO coalition member to get the clearances for another NATO member to fly a MEDEVAC mission (six hours later, after a prime minister agreed but two lads had bled to death in the meantime), I would argue that is a shaky arrangement at best.

Ireland does have a sterling reputation as a credible, non aligned country and IMHO Ireland should capitilize on it. Our DF should have the capability to field a Bn sized Motorized Infantry Task Force with ADA, Anti Armour, Signals, robust field hospital/medical capabilty and sustainment abilty to include rotory and intra theater air assets. If this is the "tooth" then the "tail" requires nearly half as much again of the same equipment at home station for training/replacement/maintenance cycles. But all this costs money, especially if it presents the appearance of "sitting on the shelf not really doing much". So, instead of a procurement plan for something like the C27J (which could be used at home for search and resce, fisheries, etc) and more Augusta's (or a similar airframe), a common series of trucks, APC's and light vehicles, we have what we have right now.

A developed, reasonably wealthy (although things are a bit dodgy right now) country like Ireland has IMHO a responsibilty to be willing to help other less better off countries (be it war, famine, whatever) but you can't do it on the cheap. As your house is burning, it is not time to wonder are your local fire brigade well equiped. Until the politcal will is there or there is another Congo like disaster, I don't see it changing and that's the crime of it all. Our soldiers are brillaint, great people, dedicated and willing to serve their country and this is how we thank them.

Mods: feel free to move to another forum if appropriate.

lads (and lasses) intent here is for debate/discussion on the policies, not the merits of the C-130 vs. the C-17 etc.

Meanwhile Irishrgr reinforces his foxhole, tightens chinstrap and ensures SAPI plate is intact.

A

[Eddie Dillon]

Our heroes in Defence take a back seat to the caste of leprechauns who define Ireland's morality

By Kevin Myers


Wednesday May 13 2009

I've been able to hear the 105s from the Glen of Imaal firing-range over recent days.

I must be one of the few people who welcome the sound of heavy mortar-fire. It's a reminder of the young men and women who have chosen to serve in the uniform of the Republic. My home is also on the southern limit of the Air Corps practice circuits from Baldonnel, so I often see the Pilatus trainers and the AW139 helicopters overhead.

There are many things we did not do during the Tiger years, but apart from our failures to radically improve our primary schools, the worst was that we did not make ourselves into a militarily grown-up nation. A true republic does its best to guard its skies, to mind its seas and to patrol its borders. It gives its soldiers, airmen and sailors the equipment which makes them members of modern defence forces, and not of a well-equipped gendarmerie.

By now, we should have bought a squadron of Hercules transport planes able to lift our soldiers to theatre, without -- pathetically -- calling for the assistance of Zrxgyzxgristan. We should have had attack and heavy-lift helicopters to assist our soldiers on the ground. We should have had a squadron of F16s or Mirages to patrol our airspace and our seas. In other words, we should have created an army and air corps which can use violence to further our national interest. But of course, even to say that is to risk the wrath of that extraordinarily powerful constituency in Irish life, which lives in a permanent kindergarten of neutralism, piety, pacifism and victimhood.

There is a weird continuum that reaches from the IRA through Maire Harrington of the Shell-to-Sea campaign to Michael D Higgins: and though the last named is a complete opponent to terrorism, he is nonetheless on the pacifist edge of an entire spectrum.

This constitutes an alter-Hibernian society within the rest of society: it is almost an autonomous moral order. Its members really do seem to believe that they are morally superior to the rest of us, and that they care more.

The bard of this autonomous society is Christy Moore. Their dead ranks have included the late Tony Gregory and the poet John O'Donoghue.

Their living members include the entire Shell-to-Sea movement, most of the Greens, the Shinners, and the barking lunatics of the INLA. They are deeply literate in the woes of the Irish nation; they can tell you about the injustice done to the Birmingham Six, but are usually a little hazier about the injustices done to the Birmingham 21.

To achieve a higher status in Irish life is simple: don the raiment of the Gaelic Way, of Pacifist Environmentalism, and most of all, of an Anti-American Neutralism and BINGO! You officially become an Irish Person of Principle.

Of course, true statehood is not about declaring vacuous moral positions. It is about the hard morality of standing for policies agreed by the lawfully elected government. It is about declaring the modern state is sovereign from the centre to the sea, then to some hundred miles beyond, and about eight miles above. These are the mundane realities which a whole sector of Irish society refuses to agree to completely.

Yet despite their pathological unrealism, these self-designated People of Principle are much cherished within the media. Maire Harrington of Shell-to-Sea is almost a modern heroine. No-one campaigning that Shell should be allowed to build its gas-processing plant in Mayo, as agreed, would ever get the generous publicity which she has been given. Christy Moore, God help us, has even sung a song about her. The Dail has remained silent in response to her deplorable and often illegal activities. Why? Because she has been designated a Person of Principle.

It is as if the national conscience were defined by a caste of leprechauns, whose higher moral status is presumed from the outset, regardless of deed. Thus Christy Moore is mysteriously deemed to be more a man of conscience than, say, the garda commissioner, though unlike Fachtna Murphy, he has solved no crime, locked up no terrorist, and made society in no way safer. Ditto Higgins. Ditto Harrington. Ditto The Lot.

The truth is that the real men and women of principle in this country wear the uniforms of An Garda Siochana and the Defence Forces. The former have done well out of the Celtic Tiger, the latter not. It will probably be another decade before we once again have the money to fit them out as they should be equipped.

So the least we can do over the coming decade is to re-order our moral hierarchy, and dethrone the leprechauns. For it is not especially heroic to bawl some maudlin ballad about The Carrickmacross Six, or prate in Dail Eireann about the evils of US foreign policy, or picket a multinational company and prevent it from doing its lawful business.

No. Our true national heroes never say anything in public. They are too busy in the Glen of Imaal, training for combat.

- Kevin Myers

[DeV]

Lets invite him to IMO!

[hedgehog]

Lets invite him to IMO!

I am fully behind you on that one

an honoury membership

all the fine galers shot this down the last time

[Dazzler]

I hate it when I agree with Journalists. But I can never help it with Kevin Myers. He seems to hold the same views as me, but says it much more eloquently than I could.

[Eddie Dillon]

I hate it when I agree with Journalists. But I can never help it with Kevin Myers. He seems to hold the same views as me, but says it much more eloquently than I could.

x2. Well written piece on a subject I dont think I have ever seen any other journalist even comment on

[trellheim]

Agreed. Well said.

[madmark]

i think he should run for office

[Traumagod]

i think he should run for office

He has my vote. Excellent article.

[Duffer]

If he runs for public office he would get my vote