This is a nonsense story. Its 240km of the Irish coast. Irish territorial waters end at 22km. This is 218km outside of that. Its clearly in International waters. Like in the movies you can do what you like there as no laws cover international waters. You can do drugs whatever you like. If it was Japan or Turkey doing the same, we could still do nothing about it. US cruisers often park themselves 22km off the Russian coast and its perfectly legit.

Absolutely we need to invest. Radar, cyber and some sort of air force so we don’t have to rely on the RAF should be a starting point.

Even neutrality needs fire power in order to defend it.

The missiles they carry are also in range of London and Paris.
Sensationalist reporting…as if it’s all Ireland’s fault. Looks like an article from The Daily Mail.

This is exciting stuff. I’m heading to the southwest with binoculars a few packets of Tayto and cans of Guinness to watch the show……..

The neglect of naval and military capabilities is one thing. But surely given our geographical location and the air traffic that passes through Irish territory our radar capabilities should be cutting edge, even as a strategic asset to the EU let alone national interests given we are an island at the most Westerly point of EU to US. Ireland has a number of strategic locations along the West Coast: it would be foolish not to conduct war games along our coast lines given our geographical proximity to US/UK/EU. Its a reaction test. Just like the HSE attack which we failed miserably.

Just wondering Tom, is that the same two fingers that the USA and NATO give Russia, when they place military assets in the countries bordering Russia?

It’s hardly a fair and objective assessment of the current situation, if you act as if the timeline of this finger waving conflict only started with the announcement of these Russian missile testing/wargames and as if the posturing only happens on one side…

Hysteria

We’ll send out the government learjet to monitor the situation..relax folks

Should be met with a wall of EU Ships.

They’ll be fine so long as they don’t fish.

What a sad protest in favour of US and NATO International violence…. while slavishly accepting US military pouring through Shannon airport on their way to bring death and destruction to so many parts of the world. His deliberate ignoring of the fears the Russians have as NATO forces itself againt their borders….. the last time the west crossed their border the Russians lost 25,000,000 people and suffered catastrophic devastation….. . Please try to be an advocate for peace ….. even though one might lose all invitations to international armaments shows….

It’s very simple. Let Europe and the US deliver what we want, reunification and liberation of our small nation, and I would be prepared for us to participate in an EU only defence cooperation involving radar, cyber, and air and sea defence operating from our bases but,.. only for specified purposes voted by Dáil Éireann, not for third party wars as Shannon is being used for.

Many of our Defence Forces senior personnel got tired of living on peanuts and are now working in Aldi as logistics managers on quite decent packages.

“In recent years, Russian military aircraft have repeatedly incurred into Irish controlled airspace – forcing the RAF to scramble, intercept and shadow these intruders out of EU airspace.”

So the Russians illegally enter Irish airspace and then the RAF take off without our permission and also illegally enter Irish airspace.

Like placing chess pieces.

Government should ask for a US / French plus European carriers to protect and join the fishing trawlers and scupper any testing.
Besides the Russians know the Fiber optic communications cable runs through here. Who knows they might sever it costing Europe billions. Oops sorry that was an accident.

Those russians, up to no good as usual.

According to the USA website Ireland has 3 primary radars that also feed to ATC.

https://www.iaa.ie/air-traffic-management/technology/surveillance-radar

We might not know what’s going on out there but I don’t believe for one second that the UK doesn’t know what’s coming in our direction. There’s no way they wouldn’t know what’s beyond the Irish Sea before it hits Wales.

All we need is a hurricane or tsunami to sink the russian armada.

Send Lisa Smith to deal with them as her penance

Jesus, they gave away a lot here. Made it too easy!

Not to disagree with the point that Ireland needs to invest in defence, but to play devil’s advocate here.. What have the Russians ever done to us? We don’t have awful relations with Russia unlike most of the EU/US. Even for much of the cold war, Aeroflot landed in Shannon. So, now they are testing some gear outside of our territorial waters, outside even our EEZ as far as can be deduced, in international waters. Why the spreading of FUD?
Taking a step back, it is clear to anyone that NATO has been belligerently surrounding Russia for decades, including militarily occupying former Soviet countries that still have areas with majority Russian population. Have to consider that there’s a more sensible way to get on with Russia in this day and age.. The bellicosity props up the likes of Putin.

Let’s be honest. We could spend all our money on defense and Russia would still kick our a**.

This guy has his own agenda to push and hates the Irish Defence forces

Get the big guns on Spike Island back into action quick lads

Where was all the outrage when the Brits were 35 K off Malin Head! Give it a break. If we were to spend 5% of GDP on Defense it wouldn’t matter. Pure hysteria. What did we do when the Brits sank an Irish fishing vessel? Shot down an Aer Lingus plane? Planted bombs in Dublin/Monaghan? A little perspective please?

as always the comment section is a great insight into the Irish mindset.

Expert in field lays out well reasoned points and we have the habitual “experts” debate it.

What is written in the article is mostly true if not somewhat sensationalist. but thats the nature of conflict. anything could set it off and it needs to be taken seriously. but thankfully MAD and nuclear deterrents mean any war is highly unlikely.

And the idea that its not Ireland’s problem is blatantly false. we are part of the EU. most of the former Soviet bloc are in the EU. ergo its not just NATO that Russia speaks of. they see it as the same thing.

The Government should ask for a US / French plus European carriers to protect and join the fishing trawlers and scupper any testing.
Besides the Russians know the Fiber optic communications cable runs through here. Who knows they might sever it costing Europe billions. Oops sorry that was an accident.

I remember the time of the gulf war, there were comparisons done in one of the newspapers showing the military capacity of the USA, Iraq and Ireland. I remember we had enough ammunition at that time to last something like six minutes

Well done Russia hav a stop off at Shannon

In the famous story, somebody told Stalin that the Pope, leader of 1 billion Catholics, opposed the Soviet Union and its ideology of atheistic communism. Stalin quipped ‘if he opposes me, where are his divisions’?

Tom Clonan is pointing out that in Ireland we are all Pope, no Stalin. We are ‘very concerned’ about Russia military testing near our coast, but we have no primary radar, little investment in cyber security, etc. If we opppose Russian meddling what are we going to do about it? Complain or build our divisions? Where are our divisions?

Apart from maybe the Isle of man invading us with an armada of paddleboards all the money in this country will not protect us from invasion anyone else. Total waste of money.

This situation just highlights what a pathetic, weak state Ireland is when it comes to protecting its own security. The first duty of any government is to protect it’s own citizens and successive Irish governments have failed to do that. Ireland’s defence forces are treated abysmally, underpaid, under equipped and under valued by the population. I mean no offence to the men and women who serve, they do their best and are professional people doing a job that is, frankly a waste of time and effort. The sorry state of IDF is a shameful indictment of the country and how it’s run, politicians are paid obscene salaries and gold plated pensions for doing sweet fa whilst people who are asked to go into harms way are treated like crap. Ireland is the weakest link in Europe’s defence, relying on the RAF for air security, no naval capability, no military radar, no Air Force plane even capable of keeping up with a jetliner, the truth of the matter is that Ireland is a laggard, it has been sponging off the rest of the EU for decades when it comes to defence. Irish troops can’t even be transported without begging other nations for a lift. Smaller, less prosperous countries have better equipped and better paid militaries than Ireland and yet the same old nonsense continues to prevail in Ireland, the “neutrality” mob, the “everybody loves the Irish” mob, the “sure nobody is going to attack us” mob, the “America will come and save us” mob, grow up people, Ireland is responsible for its own security and this Russian intrusion into our EEZ just shows what a weak little country we really are, you know it’s bad when it’s the local fishermen who are planning to go out there and ‘face down” the Russians when the so called navy is tied up for lack of crew! They are either being brave or foolhardy, but make no mistake the Russians won’t think twice about sinking them if they get in their way and all their bravado and no doubt the whining from the Irish government won’t do much good when if these fishermen end up being crushed just like the Chechens or the Georgians were when they got in the way of the Russians. Ireland has been freeloading for too long, it expects to the rest of the EU to back it when it comes to brexit/NI but refuses to spend money on its defence to protect the western flank of the EU, a weakness the Russians have now locked on to and will exploi long into the future. Ireland’s entire “data” driven economy could be destroyed by ripping up the data cables that run right thru the area the Russians have picked to play war games, NATO, the US/UK will no doubt be watching closely what Putin gets up to with an eye on Ukraine meanwhile the Irish government will do as they always do and bury their heads in the sand and expect other countries to fill the gap left by their failure to do the most basic requirement of any government and look after the peace and security of its own people. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of hostile comments coming my way for this telling of some home truths but sometimes the truth hurts. If Ireland is not going to fund its defence forces then what’s the point of having them. Time for the Irish government and people to either put up or shut up. It can’t go on being Europe’s defence spongers and slackers.