Excerpted from a rather cringeworthy, if not at times outright delusional, article in the Irish edition of today's
The Sunday Times (page 10, "We Must Keep a laser focus on the threats to Ireland, warns Martin", byline John Mooney):
Martin is very clear what's required. Ireland he says, will never be a military power but the Defence Forces need to be able to protect the state and by default Europe. Building up this capability will take time, despite the speed at which his officials and the general staff are operating. He points to the decision to procure an advanced primary radar system, capable of monitoring Irish-controlled airspace, its land domain and the maritime environment by 2028.
At the moment, Ireland relies on civilian or secondary radar, which is capable of tracking only aircraft that have switched on their transponders. In recent years, Russian military aircraft have passed through Irish-controlled airspace undetected until they were identified by neighbouring countries' radar systems and Nato.
"The absence of primary radar capability is a significant gap in our national defence. It compromises our ability to maintain full situational awareness over our airspace, which is critical in an era of heightened global tensions," he said.
In future, the military will have a system capable of monitoring its airspace but also its maritime and land domain, as part of three related air defence and radar projects termed the Military Radar Recognised Air Picture Programme.
"It will involve land-based long-range primary radar, ground based air defence systems to counter unmanned aerial systems, and maritime ship-borne radar systems. So it's a very complex programme. The procurement process has already started. We are working with another country on procurement," Martin said.
When operational, the system will enable Ireland not only defend itself but also help also help Europe by alerting neighbouring countries to hostile actors passing off the west coast. The military intends to acquire a sonar system to detect hostile activity such as submarines off the west coast to protect subsea cables and critical infrastructure.
"There's collaboration across the EU and across like-minded states that if they see something suspicious or untoward, they'll alert the relevant member state or country that is involved. Russians come in, they're being observed. They're also testing how far they can go and all of that. There's all these kinds of, dare I say, games going on between different actors. But the French or the British will alert us, and we'll alert the British or the French in given situations," Martin said.
The future military of which Martin speaks of is essentially designed to be interoperable, whereby it can work independently, but also partner with other armies in crisis situations.
"Ireland is not an island on its own. We have to co-operate with other member states. We have to work with them in the context of the European Union but also in the context of expertise. Cybersecurity will not be done by any one country on its own. You have to share expertise, share learnings and so on," he says.
Some context:
As you will have no doubt have guessed, the 'Military Radar Recognised Air Picture Programme' is, at best, a paper project, without even a token budget. The sonar project also mentioned even more so.
Micheál Martin is Ireland's
Tánaiste (basically our deputy prime minister) as well as serving as the current Minister of Defence along with being Minister for Foreign Affairs (no prizes for guessing which of the latter two posts he normally pays more attention to). He is also the head of Fianna Fáil, one of the three parties that make up the (increasingly unstable) coalition that serves as our current government, such as it is, and what there is of it. What attention Martin has paid to his Defence portfolio before now can be best summed up in one sentence: He wants to make the Irish military more 'woke'. Actual combat capability doesn't enter into it at all, as he cheerfully admits elsewhere in the article (if I had posted that part, the mods would have likely thought that I was making it up!).
This, what can only be described as a puff piece, comes as there is increasingly speculation that our current
Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) will call an early election in November rather than wait until February of next year when the current government's term is due to run out under the legislation presently underpinning the current coalition; It seems that he, much like his infamous immediate predecessor, has made the mistake of beginning to believe his own propaganda. Given past Irish political history, going for an early election may prove to be rather unwise, to the point of making Rishi Sunak look like a genius in comparison. So, as part of this attempt to put clear blue water between himself and his coalition partners before any such election (while at the same time trying to assuage rapidly rising irritation [to put it mildly] on the part of our lords and masters in Brussels over our shameless freeloading re. defence), Martin is trying to sound to strong on defence, while attempting to not put off those liberal voters who hate the defence forces and indeed anything military (or indeed police related) with every fibre of their being. The same type of voters by the way which were very happy with things like Ireland recognising Hamas as the legitimate government of Palestine. It is not genocide after all, if it is Jews that are being driven into the sea (I really wish that I was joking, but that mindset is actually quite prevalent in certain circles).
It is insane, but that is the way things are in the Ireland of 2024, at least so far as our political betters are concerned.
www.telegraph.co.uk
