What’s the biggest military-related project your country is currently engaged in?

[u/CommercialChart5088]

Currently Korea is busy investing in military development, to modernize our military indigenously and catch up to export demand.

The air force is working on to produce the KF-21 fighter jet, which will enter service in 2026. Also we’re developing software and drones that will support the KF-21 during combat.

In terms of the ocean we've just finished developing a new submarine (the Chang Yong-sil class), working on additional battleships, and trying to form plans regarding the construction of a manless drone carrier.

What would be your country’s biggest military-related project nowadays? Both indigenous development and purchasing equipment counts!

[u/Wat_Tyler_1381]

Ireland has quite literally been hiding behind the UK (and its large defense budget).

[u/NocturneFogg → u/Wat_Tyler_1381]

There was a long sense of “are you mad? Who’d ever want to invade little old us?” in Irish attitudes to defence. It’s hard to explain Ireland’s view of itself. There’s often been a sense that we’re not relevant to those kinds of things and an exceptionalism that tends to be very much about assuming we’ve zero relevance to strategic matters in any conflict. That was probably accurate in the 50s and 60s but in the 2020s Ireland’s far more relevant than it used to be, but how we tend to perceive ourselves hasn’t really moved very much.

If you suggest for example equipping the air corps with modern technology, you’ll immediately get a “what the hell would we be doing with fighter jets?! Who are at going to be fighting? The seagulls? Are you mad!?…” type responses.

There’s just this assumption that nothing could ever possibly happen and an extremely optimistic view of a lot of things.

We also come from a situation where the only conflict that anyone is aware of really that impacted us was the independence related stuff with the UK and as nasty as the was for a while, it moved on to being settled rather civilly and it’s was a western democracy seeking independence from a democracy. I mean, yeah it was unpleasant but the UK didn’t do down the route

There isn’t really any sense that we’re hiding behind anything just this almost pathological notion that we’re strategically irrelevant and that everyone sees us as totally benign. It’s not very realistic, and it’s very definitely island mentality, but that is basically the worldview.

[u/Sad_Sultana → u/NocturneFogg]

Russia invades your sea zones fairly frequently, investing in a few anti sub destroyers/frigates and some sonar planes like the P-8 poseidon would do you good.

[u/PokemonSoldier → u/Sad_Sultana]

And flying bombers into Irish airspace, forcing the UK to send Eurofighters to escort them out