Undersea cables<\/a> now carry huge amounts of global traffic.\u00a0<\/p>\nCyberattacks can knock out hospitals, utilities, and public services. Supply chains are less reliable. Drones have changed the way power is projected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even information itself is now contested. Yet too much of our thinking about defence still sounds like a purchasing exercise \u2014 find the cheapest compliant option, sign the contract, move on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That may work for office equipment, but it does not work for national security.<\/p>\n
This is not an argument for building a traditional military-industrial complex. Ireland is not going to become a weapons-manufacturing state, nor should it try.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But that is not the same as saying we should remain dependent on others for the expertise and systems that underpin our own security.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is a real difference between avoiding militarisation and accepting weakness.<\/p>\n
At the moment, Ireland imports not just equipment but, increasingly, the skills needed to operate, maintain, and adapt that equipment. That is where the vulnerability lies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For a small state, the biggest risk is often not the absence of hardware; it is the loss of domestic knowledge and capability.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can buy a radar system, but you cannot buy the years of experience needed to interpret what it is telling you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can contract cybersecurity support, but you cannot outsource sovereign judgement in the middle of a live crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can acquire surveillance tools, but you cannot instantly create the institutional memory needed to use them well.<\/p>\n
That is why the defence debate here needs to mature. The future of Irish capability will not look like arms production.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It will sit instead at the intersection of technology, cyber security, infrastructure resilience, aerospace support, software, and advanced maintenance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In some ways, the ingredients are already here. Ireland has strong positions in software, aviation leasing and maintenance, data infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, and advanced manufacturing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These are not usually discussed in defence terms, but many of them have clear strategic value.<\/p>\n
Cyber security is the clearest example. As more of our public and private systems move online, cyber resilience is no longer just a technical issue for IT teams. It is a question of sovereignty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A state cannot rely entirely on outsourced capability in a crisis; it needs a domestic base of expertise that can advise, interpret and act when things go wrong.<\/p>\n
The same is true at sea. Ireland\u2019s Atlantic position gives it real strategic importance, especially in relation to undersea cables, offshore energy, and digital connectivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Protecting those assets does not mean building submarines or destroyers. It does mean developing our own strength in maritime sensing, unmanned systems, secure communications, data analysis, and infrastructure monitoring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The same logic applies to defence aviation. We do not need fighter jets or weapons factories, but we do have a strong aviation sector, and that could support the maintenance and sustainment of surveillance aircraft, transport aircraft, and maritime patrol capability.<\/p>\n
The central point is simple: capability takes time to build. Once it is lost, it is very hard to recover.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Skills ecosystems cannot be created overnight, and institutional memory cannot be bought back at short notice.<\/p>\n
That is why we need to move beyond a narrow view of procurement. Traditional procurement asks what is cheapest today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strategic planning asks something more difficult: what capabilities must remain inside the State, even if they seem inefficient in the short term?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those are not the same question, and they do not lead to the same answer.<\/p>\n
None of this is an argument against value for money, oversight, or accountability. It is an argument against confusing short-term savings with long-term strength.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ireland has a habit of outsourcing complexity while keeping the responsibility. We have seen that in infrastructure, in digital systems, and in large public projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over time, the State has often lost the ability to challenge suppliers, assess risk properly, or act independently. Defence simply makes that problem more obvious.<\/p>\n
Other small European states have understood this for some time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finland has built resilience through long-term planning and strong domestic systems integration. Estonia has made cyber security a core part of national sovereignty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Denmark has invested heavily in maritime awareness and sensing because geography demands it. None of these countries set out to become military powers.<\/p>\n
Ireland must now accept that sovereign capacity is something that has to be built, maintained, and renewed over time.<\/p>\n
The real question is not whether Ireland needs an arms industry. It is whether we are willing to invest steadily in the technological, cyber, industrial, and maintenance capabilities that allow a small state to remain independent in practice, not just in theory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is a harder conversation than talking about defence spending. But it is the one we should be having.<\/p>\n
Paul Davis is associate professor of management at DCU<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, the subject sat at the edge of political life, treated as awkward, expensive, and best kept…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-493403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493403","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=493403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}