spitfire
Walty McWaltface
We don't need to, the Cork fishers saw off that Russian exercise group on their own.
Finland & Sweden, and NATO membership.
- Thread starter cupid_stunt
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We don't need to, the Cork fishers saw off that Russian exercise group on their own.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
Nah, government have - effectively - come out against it, and the 'body politic' is completely opposed. There's no urgency to anything in the defence sphere, the much heralded commission report got buried, the govt say they'll take 6 months to read it, but they started quibbling with recommendations from the off.
NATO is quite happy that Ireland won't apply to join, it saves embarrassment all round - no one wants a potential Shinner govt in NATO, and Ireland was only ever going to contribute geography.
If you started off with a blank sheet of paper then geography alone says you'd like Ireland in NATO, but the politics of it, and NATO bases in Scotland, Norway, the Azores and Iceland make it not worth a tenth of the hassle involved.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
The best that can be hoped for-say if some sort of settlement takes place over Ukraine and Russia retires hurt but eventually regains some semblance of its previous relationship with the rest of the world-is a military buildup along the whole expanded border with NATO, including nuclear. That in itself is massively destabilising even if you forget the increased potential for accident or miscalculation, and will apply whether or not Putin is replaced by somebody less hostile to the west.
The worst is that Russia is backed into a corner and punished by continual impoverishment, but remains belligerant. The chances of it going for the nihilistic option would be high.
All the inbetweens are bad as well. And that leaves aside the many other destabilising factors (climate crisis and resource wars, and the potential for military conflict with China to name only the most obvious) that will inevitably afflict the world in coming decades, which are bound to impact, in one way or another, on Europe, causing rising tensions.
We will be nostalgic for the days of Cold War stability, when war was usually fought between proxies whose people didn't matter.
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Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I was talking to someone with, shall we say, "an insight into the thinking" on this one, and his perception is that NATO is a damaged brand here in Ireland. But he definitely foresaw more Irish participation in EU defence cooperation.
The distinction may come to be a moot one - or not, depending on how things turn out with the Anglo NATO countries.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Huh, I always thought it was the other way around.
MrCurry
right after this urgent rest
Nope.
scandinavia = sweden, norway, denmark
nordic countries = above + Iceland + Finland.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Nicely done
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
+ Scotland?
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
I've just posted that on the meme thread, nice bit of trolling.
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
Yup, I think both Finland and Sweden will, at least start, applying to join NATO in 2022 - and I can see NATO "fast-tracking" approval in principle.
Putin's army moving into Ukraine pretty much guaranteed that.
Public opinion in Sweden has gone from 1/3s for, against & don't know to pretty much 60% in favour in recent weeks.
{source ; various commentators & pundits quoting opinion polls}
To my mind, Finland, in particular, needs the "Article 5" protection ...
Putin's army moving into Ukraine pretty much guaranteed that.
Public opinion in Sweden has gone from 1/3s for, against & don't know to pretty much 60% in favour in recent weeks.
{source ; various commentators & pundits quoting opinion polls}
To my mind, Finland, in particular, needs the "Article 5" protection ...
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
A military exercise or a 'military exercise'?
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
St Petersburg is so pretty in the Spring...
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Ireland has a total military strength of nearly 10000
NATO has 3.5million troops
Its covered by the RAF and the Royal Navy. The Irish military are very good but they are minuscule and have zero offensive capability.
The main problem stems from nobody believing the Soviet Union would just collapse entire careers were made of Kremlinolgy often total Bullshit. By time people got there head around the idea it was way tom late to help.
NATO has 3.5million troops
Its covered by the RAF and the Royal Navy. The Irish military are very good but they are minuscule and have zero offensive capability.
The main problem stems from nobody believing the Soviet Union would just collapse entire careers were made of Kremlinolgy often total Bullshit. By time people got there head around the idea it was way tom late to help.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
It didn't exactly collapse. It was wound up by those who had gained the upper hand among the people in charge. It would still be with us in some form if certain decisions taken around 1988-89 at Soviet government level hadn't happened.
People did 'help.' Most western advisers, Kremlinologists included, told them to destroy the Soviet state and simply free up the market. This is why 'the west' is sanctioning oligarchs* now (the very same people who were supposed to lead the ex-USSR to a market-oriented liberal democracy, and are/were friends with many western politicians and leading businessmen and women.) The whole process-an utter disaster for most of the ex-Soviet people-led to Putin. If it hadn't been Putin, it would have been another strongman with a nationalistic outlook. It was always going to come to something like this.
It could yet be the way the world ends. Or at least most of us in it. Not with a whimper but a series of fucking loud bangs.
*We should not forget that Ukraine has, like Russia and the rest of the ex-USSR, been largely run by oligarchs since 1991.
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existentialist
Tired and unemotional
TBF, any prognostications about other people's military capabilities always have huge error bands - the fundamental mistake isn't so much, in my view at least, getting it wrong, as putting far too much weight on those estimates. It's common enough in business, but I imagine it's exactly the same in military analysis, that the people saying "Ah, but what if it's not like that?" tend to get shouted down by the orthodoxy, which becomes the sole narrative. I bet we'll find plenty of people saying what we're now realising, but - for all kinds of reasons, not all of them logical - the primary version adopted will be the one that suits certain people, or conforms to their preconceived expectations.
War is a fabulous way of exposing the glaring holes in human psychology and perception.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
Ireland has 7500 troops
no tanks
no fast jets
no warships its got some patrol boats that aren't armed with missiles
1000 anti tank missiles.
its currently deploying 300 peacekeepers it doesn't bring anything useful to Nato
although 4000 Irish citizens serve in the UK forces so it does have Nato troops
no tanks
no fast jets
no warships its got some patrol boats that aren't armed with missiles
1000 anti tank missiles.
its currently deploying 300 peacekeepers it doesn't bring anything useful to Nato
although 4000 Irish citizens serve in the UK forces so it does have Nato troops
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
I would say that for the Russians, what we got wrong was the shade of grey.
The nature of the problems they have - the lack of training, the over-centralisation, the top-down rigidity, the corruption, the crap exercises that weren't exercises but role demonstrations, the shoddy gear, the mil leadership selected on political loyalty rather than quality and all the rest - we knew about. None of that is a surprise, all of it has been a feature of Russian Armies since the wars of the Tsars.
What we got wrong was the extent to which that would throw a spanner in the wheels of the enormous mass and firepower they undoubtedly have.
The Red Army managed to grind out a result despite its shortcomings, and we thought that the New Russian Army would do likewise - that it's shere mass and firepower would overcome both it's enemy and it's limitations.
Two things look different - in scale - firstly the corruption: the Red Army had a corruption problem, but it mostly had a 'can't do, but can't tell the truth' problem', the current Russian Army has both, but the corruption is far worse, and it's far more corrosive to morale. The other thing is that for all its problems, the Red Army believed in Commonality: that it was easier to fight a war with one type of tank, one type of truck, one type of rocket artillery system, whatever the quality of them might be, than with with five type of anything, even if they were better than the one type. Logistics, training, maintenance.
The current Russian military has, for political reasons, swung the other way - a bewildering number of types of tanks and aircraft, all purchased in small batches from different manufacturers to placate a Byzantine power and corruption system - and all needing their own training, maintainance and logistics pipeline to keep them operational.
The nature of the problems they have - the lack of training, the over-centralisation, the top-down rigidity, the corruption, the crap exercises that weren't exercises but role demonstrations, the shoddy gear, the mil leadership selected on political loyalty rather than quality and all the rest - we knew about. None of that is a surprise, all of it has been a feature of Russian Armies since the wars of the Tsars.
What we got wrong was the extent to which that would throw a spanner in the wheels of the enormous mass and firepower they undoubtedly have.
The Red Army managed to grind out a result despite its shortcomings, and we thought that the New Russian Army would do likewise - that it's shere mass and firepower would overcome both it's enemy and it's limitations.
Two things look different - in scale - firstly the corruption: the Red Army had a corruption problem, but it mostly had a 'can't do, but can't tell the truth' problem', the current Russian Army has both, but the corruption is far worse, and it's far more corrosive to morale. The other thing is that for all its problems, the Red Army believed in Commonality: that it was easier to fight a war with one type of tank, one type of truck, one type of rocket artillery system, whatever the quality of them might be, than with with five type of anything, even if they were better than the one type. Logistics, training, maintenance.
The current Russian military has, for political reasons, swung the other way - a bewildering number of types of tanks and aircraft, all purchased in small batches from different manufacturers to placate a Byzantine power and corruption system - and all needing their own training, maintainance and logistics pipeline to keep them operational.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Surely even NATO needs to be reminded now and again that even 800 years of coercion, aggression, massacre, famine and plantation doesn't lead inexorably to victoryIreland has 7500 troops
no tanks
no fast jets
no warships its got some patrol boats that aren't armed with missiles
1000 anti tank missiles.
its currently deploying 300 peacekeepers it doesn't bring anything useful to Nato
although 4000 Irish citizens serve in the UK forces so it does have Nato troops
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
DownwardDog
Riding a Brompton with a power meter.
Why are they on civvie trucks? Are all of our Heavy Transporters broken or sold off or similar MoD wheeze?
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
They’re driving on the right, so presumably the tanks got flown in and Mika Hakkinen picked them up from the airport and took them to the exercise?
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
They went on one of the Point class RO-RO vessels - and for reasons of practicality (as Bahnhof Strasse notes) they went of Finnish civvy trucks.
It was also a deliberate exercise in integrating with the Finnish system and infrastructure.
And yes, cost-cutting has had a hollowing out effect. It simply takes far longer than it should to do some things, and moving tanks around is one of them.
Logistics, logistics, logistics.... always the unfashionable one.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
But as we have seen over the last few weeks logistics really matter.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
TBF that lesson is probably forgotten and then re-learned (often painfully) in almost every war you can think of.
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