Hello all,
Unfortunately the White Paper mentioned is notorious in Irish military circles. Less than half the projects have been started, let alone finished. I’ll say that the military side of the house have been keen to drive these things along and leave it at that.
Primary radar exists in terms of civilian airports, but it lacks the long range coverage to look right out there. Connaught and Kerry airports both take feeds from the primary radar in Shannon for example.
Biden as POTUS or not, I’m not sure how the wider public would take to a permanent US deployment or indeed any other under a NATO guise. Even PFP is a stretch for some. Some sort of EUFOR mission, maybe ( even if it was the same people, and still a big maybe!), but proving the need politically would still be the first requirement.
There’s a bit of a conversation going on Twitter at the moment if you look for @IDFOC
Otherwise, the whole underlying, bottom layer of the pyramid is still personnel retention. Post Covid, the recent re-entry stream will likely dry up and the need to look at Ts and Cs for all ranks will determine whether or not any capability can be developed.
Dec