A live fire Russian naval exercise has been scheduled inside the Irish EEZ, at a time when tensions on Russian military build ups relative to Ukraine are high.
What do we know and what can we speculate on?
Now, disclaimer, I am in no way a naval or ASW authority and will bow to the experience of others.
First question.
Why that location?
Let's explore the terrain. The Porcupine Seabright.
A deep, enclosed area, with only a western access point. Ideal for protecting a submarine?
It certainly helps if that western access point has an armed naval blocking force protecting it.
The red box is where the Russians will be firing into.
What's interesting is that this exercise box is 170 nautical miles off the south coast of Ireland.
Incidentally, so was a suspicious Russian trawler suspected of deploying submersibles back in July 2021 170nm away.
Could that previous event have been sub-surface reconnaissance?
Others may recall that the Russians flew their ASW TU-142 Bears over that location in March 2020 too.
Perhaps that was a sub surface signal mapping exercise? Testing 🇮🇪 reactions, or lack there of?
There's a lot to suggest battlespace preparation here.
Assuming the max range of the Kalibr-M is 4500km, and can travel at a speed of Mach 2.5 (3087kmh), then the images below give an indication of what is in range of that capability and how long it would take to get to capital target from the Exercise Area inside Ireland's EEZ
We don't know what is going to happen.
We don't know what the Russians are doing.
We can't see what's happening in Irish skies.
We can't see what's happening under the surface of the water.
We have no way of preventing something bad happening.
Firstly, severing a subsea fiber isnt as simple as it sounds. Breaking a cable is one thing, severing it, is quite another.
Fiber optics are lightweight glass products, but propagating light across oceans requires power, so the cable is more a power cable as it is a fiber cable.
What's worth noting is that as the technology evolves, the form factor of subsea cables start to change.
More fiber cores are being pumped into small cables, means longer cables can be spooled onto cable laying ships.
Is neutrality a hill worth a United Ireland dying on?
Hypothetically, if a #UnitedIreland was conditional on the State applying for @NATO membership, would it be worth surrendering the undefined policy of #neutrality?
Actually, the latter point isn't strictly accurate, as @NATO acknowledges Ireland's "military neutrality" (note: they spelt out what it means to them).
Beyond that, there's no legally binding defined statement of Irish neutrality.
"Military Neutrality" is meaningless, the term is a self-licking lollipop.
Unless the country is run by a Junta, the military doesn't have a say in where it gets deployed. As an instrument of political will, it is completely indifferent.
One that has career structures built to develop talent in the field of technical and military Int collection, collation, analysis & effective dissemination.
We need to be capable of making big data driven decisions fast.
"With regard to the RDF, the Commission will consider a wide range of options and will make recommendations to better leverage the capabilities of the RDF in their supports to the PDF and to make service in the RDF a more attractive option."
Thankfully, the "Abolition of the Reserve" wasn't considered an option in the Terms of Reference as it was in the DoD's 2012 "Value for Money" Review of the RDF.
I would link the source, but the DoD have opted not to host it despite it informing the 2015 White Paper Policy.
The 2012 Steering Committee comprised of Civil & Military (but not a single Reservist) personnel saw no role for the Reserve as the "PDF could meet all day-to-day tasks".
8 years on, & DF capability is limited due to a crippling retention crisis as a result of DoD mismanagement.