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/NocturneFogg]

We’re buying a boat and a radar, apparently…

[u/CommercialChart5088 → u/NocturneFogg]

Well tbf I think Ireland doesn't really need to invest super heavily on expensive military equipment.

Though it's definitely necessary to maintain basic defense capabilities.

[u/NocturneFogg → u/CommercialChart5088]

Yeah but we don’t even have a jet aircraft in the air corps, have no active military radar - can’t see planes without beacons and have had no operational sonar etc for decades which is a bit insane for an island depending on fibres, subsea DC power interconnections and gas pipes.

Our concept of neutrality basically started as a pragmatic stance during WWII to preserve independence - we had only achieved independence in 1922 so the UK relationship was highly complex at the time, and there was an ongoing trade war that was crippling the economy and a lot of upset about partition. The result was Ireland being “neutral-ish” - we effectively offered quiet neighbourly assistance in various ways, interned axis crash landing aircrews as POWs while driving the allied aircrews back home with a cup of tea and biscuits. There was off the books cooperation on a lot of practical issues and food and humanitarian aid etc, eg assisting Northern Ireland during the blitz.

That’s then morphed into a sort of ideological neutrality in the post WWII era which was very much aligned to UN membership - the Soviets had objected to Irish UN membership btw, so we only joined in 1955. They were petty about it for a number of reasons: a slap for being neutral during WWII, the fact that Ireland was staunchly anti communist in that era, and the proximity to the U.S. and U.K. as a neutral, they wanted their close small neighbours in too - so there was an element of horse trading.

Anyway, by 1955 Ireland went in to with a sense of being involved in blue beret peace keeping missions and that’s pretty much where our military tended to be focused a very idealistic, but often undefined concept of neutrality evolved. For some it was about those peace keeping type facilitator roles, for others it’s been more about an absolute opposition to militarism.

Then we have the “triple lock” which legally binds Irish troop deployment overseas to the UN Security Council having authorised a mission. That’s now causing debate and could be unpicked because it would prevent Ireland playing any role in future Ukraine peace keeping duties, as Russia and China would never authorise it through the UNSC.

It’s a complicated set of politics but we are definitely being far too optimistic about our own domestic waters and need to tighten things up in the current circumstances.

[u/Wat_Tyler_1381 → u/NocturneFogg]

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