{"id":183583,"date":"2025-12-09T21:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T21:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/183583\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T21:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T21:08:07","slug":"another-gap-in-irelands-defences-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/183583\/","title":{"rendered":"another gap in Ireland\u2019s defences \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Government\u2019s reticence to confirm that unauthorised drones were launched near the flight path of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s aircraft as it approached Dublin last week is understandable but at the same time speaks to a far bigger and systemic problem.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It was appropriate for the Government to wait until they had solid intelligence about what happened and whether it was a serious and intentional attempt to disrupt Zelenskiy\u2019s flight. That would now appear to be the case, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/politics\/2025\/12\/08\/rogue-drones-during-zelenskiy-visit-part-of-co-ordinated-threat-to-europe-says-minister\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/politics\/2025\/12\/08\/rogue-drones-during-zelenskiy-visit-part-of-co-ordinated-threat-to-europe-says-minister\/\">Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan<\/a> speaking of a \u201cco-ordinated threat\u201d from unspecified actors. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The bigger issue is that it took a week from the first sighting of the drones by the crew of the Naval Service\u2019s L\u00c9 William Butler Yeats to reach this conclusion. It is further evidence \u2013 if any was needed \u2013 of the yawning gap between the capabilities of the Defence Forces and the threats now presented to the security of the State. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Drones have rapidly become integral to modern warfare yet the Defence Forces remain without the basic tools needed to combat them. They have no primary radar to detect such weapons, although one is being purchased. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Naval vessels such as the L\u00c9 William Butler Yeats do not have air search radar, electronic jamming equipment or other drone counter measures. All the crew of the vessel had at their disposal were the ship\u2019s guns, the use of which could have posed a threat to civilian airliners. The command and control structures of the Defence Forces \u2013 there is no single joint command over the Navy and Air Corps \u2013 may have further hampered any response. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The immediate task facing the Government is to rectify as many of these deficits as possible ahead of Ireland\u2019s assumption of the EU presidency next July, with several EU summits planned along with numerous ministerial meetings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Some additional equipment has been purchased with this in mind but is unlikely to close gaps such as the one exposed last week. It seems inevitable that Ireland will have to seek assistance from its EU partners and possibly the UK. It is an embarrassing turn of events but also unavoidable. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Beyond that, the wider issue that must be addressed is the role of the Defence Forces in a world that has changed significantly, making security and defence much higher priorities. The ability to patrol and control the State\u2019s own skies and seas would seem to be non-negotiable, yet the measures needed to facilitate this in terms of organisation, people and equipment are not in place or even fully agreed upon. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Behind all this confusion lies the the lack of clarity and consensus as to what Irish military neutrality means in this new dispensation. It cannot mean leaving the country defenceless. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government\u2019s reticence to confirm that unauthorised drones were launched near the flight path of Ukrainian president Volodymyr&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13308,2244,61,60,18573,43,58419],"class_list":["post-183583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-defence-forces","tag-eu","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jim-ocallaghan","tag-news","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}