Did anyone else read the article in Ireland on Sunday last? Written by Tom Prendeville, titled "What a disaster". Its basically an article of how unprepared Ireland is, in the event of different types of attacks.
Some paragraphs that might be of interest to this thread!
...in the event of any sort of air attack, we have not got one air-worthy fighter jet and we would have to rely on outdated ground-to-air missiles - or unbelievably, an officer brandishing a service revolver from the open door of a surveillance helicopter...
...Hard as it is to believe, the Air Corps aerodromes at Baldonnel and Gormanstown have no aircraft with an on-board armaments
...'We have no facilities at all to sramble jets. None of our fleet of seven trainer jets, two fishery patrol craft and eight helicopters have missile defences on board machine guns of any kind' admitted John Nolan, a Department of Defence.
...The only anti-aircraft weapons system the army has in its possession is the sophosticated L70 ground-to-air missile system. It is more suited, however, to protecting static poisitions from potential air attack...
...On that, the defence forces source added: 'If the worse came to the worst, the luckless citizens of our east coast would have to rely on an armed officer on board a Garda Squirrel sureveillance helicopter brandishing his service revolver and firing at a rouge 747 jet hurtling across the open sky at 500 miles an hour. Its the ultimate Bruce Willis scnario but, outlandish as it seems thats what it amounts to. Our only tangible defence is the RAF intercepting the aircraft in time or a British-based ground missile battery hitting the target'
