Special Report: Ireland's defence shortcomings a clear and present danger to global stability
Ireland's shortcomings in its airspace policing, maritime security and cyber defence are not only problematic for our national interest but could also threaten global stability, which has led to calls for the Government and military to be more proactive when coming to terms with real and potential risks, writes our Security Correspondent
Incursions by Russian military aircraft into Irish airspace and reports of increasing Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic and Irish Sea have added to “growing concerns” about Ireland’s ability to protect its national infrastructure.
This is according to Comdt Derek McGourty in an analysis in the Defence Forces Review 2020.
He said Irish defence was now approaching a “critical decision point” in respect of its long-term direction.
He said the Government’s announcement that it was developing the State’s first national security strategy, together with the impending Commission on the Future of the Defence Forces and a strategic defence review next year were converging to inform that process.
He said there have been key developments since the 2019 update on the 2015 White Paper on Defence.
“There have been further incursions by Russian military aircraft into Irish airspace and reports of increasing Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic and Irish Sea, which have added to growing concerns about Ireland’s inability to protect its critical national infrastructure including transatlantic fibre-optic cables that lie in Irish coastal waters.”
He said: “The Irish Naval service has no anti-submarine capability and its ability to deter or even detect such maritime intelligence gathering is exceptionally limited. Neither has Ireland got the radar, air defence, and air interdiction capability necessary to deter and monitor Russian or other aircraft entering Irish airspace without permission and instead relies on the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force to carry out this task on its behalf.”
Cmdt McGourty, an infantry officer with 20 years’ experience, said the pressures Ireland faces extend beyond the air and maritime domains with the cyber domain becoming increasingly important to protecting Ireland’s national interests.
“Ireland is home, according to some estimates, to over 30% of all European Union (EU) data, and to the European headquarters of many of the world’s leading technology companies. The country’s economic success is therefore closely tied up with its ability to provide a secure environment for these companies to operate.”
He added: “Of growing alarm then is Ireland’s lack of capacity in terms of cyber defence, leaving it vulnerable to cyberattack. This sense of vulnerability becomes heightened when one considers that Ireland’s rise as a global technology and communications hub has been accompanied by reports of growth in the Russian embassy in Dublin, suggested by some to mean that Ireland is now seen as a growing priority for Moscow.”
But he said the role of the Defence Forces in cyber security was a “supporting one”, with its primary responsibility regarding the protection of its own systems.
He said this contrasts with other Western countries who are examining the role of the military in this area.
Cdmt McGourty said Ireland should explore what role the Defence Forces should have in cyber security.
He pointed out that the wider strategic environment included Brexit and climate change, the latter now being recognised as an “unprecedented threat to global security”.
He said that while the 2015 White Paper states that “active military neutrality” continues to be the hallmark of Irish defence policy, there had been some “shift” in that policy through Ireland’s participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) Partnership for Peace (PfP) and active EU membership.
In relation to Ireland’s policy of neutrality, he had this: “The policy of preserving Ireland’s autonomy and sovereignty through neutrality may not stand up well against state and non-state actors wishing to gain an advantage in an era of hybrid conflict.”
Hybrid conflict, as defined by another contributor to the review, Brig Gen Tony Cudmore, employs political warfare and blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and information warfare utilising diplomacy, manipulation of traditional news sources and extensive social media exploitation.
Brig Gen Cudmore, with 39 years’ military service, said the EU Security Union Strategy had highlighted this threat, by declaring “the scale and diversity of hybrid threats today is unprecedented”.
He said the establishment of the Office of Emergency Planning within the Department of Defence was a useful first step in integration national security and defence capabilities.
He said the creation of the National Security Analysis Centre (NSAC) within the Department of An Taoiseach was a “significant advance” in integration.
“The development of a Hybrid Fusion Cell, as a focal point for hybrid threat assessments within the NSAC, would be beneficial to protecting against hybrid threats and building national resilience,” he said.
Like other contributors, he highlighted the opportunity from the Commission on the Future of the Defence Forces to recognise the need for a “greater primary role” for the Defence community in response to hybrid threats.
A paper by Raili Lahnalampi, Finnish ambassador to Ireland, highlights the Finnish experience in developing its cyber capacity and the lessons it might provide Ireland.
“The paper discusses digital security, or as often termed, cybersecurity, which is essential in highly digitalised countries such as Finland and Ireland,” he said.
He said that cyberattacks aiming to disrupt the proper functioning of critical infrastructures and supply of essential services were on the rise.
“European security is heavily dependent on our cyber resilience,” he said.
“This is also the case in Ireland, where about 30% of European cloud data is stored. Given the interconnected nature of the cyber domain, we need to foster partnerships and urgently strengthen our capabilities to prevent, deter and respond to these threats.”
He added: “Ireland is Europe’s data centre capital, which accentuates the need for cybersecurity. The Finnish experience in cybersecurity and the nexus to comprehensive security concept might provide an interesting perspective also for Irish policymakers. Finland and Ireland would both stand to benefit from closer cooperation on cybersecurity, whether between companies, researchers or between policy makers.”
Concentrating on the threats posed to Irish airspace, Dr Viktoriya Fedorchak argues that investment in national fighter jets for the Air Corps was the main solution to the current and future threats to the Irish state.
She said Russia poses one of the greatest threats to the NATO Alliance and said the principles of international law “have been violated and completely undermined by unilateral aggressive actions”.
Dr Fedorchak, a Lecturer in European Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said Ireland was “an ideal point” to destabilise regional security and undermine the UK’s defences, hence its importance.
“Accordingly, when Russian aircraft entered Irish-controlled airspace on numerous occasions over the last few years, Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter jets were the ones to escort them away. The most recent occurrence was on 8 March 2020, when Russian Tupolev TU-95 ‘Bear’ bombers were intercepted off the northwest coast of Ireland by six RAF Typhoons,” she said.
She said these Russian flights test national air defence capabilities in the region and give the Russians important information on the readiness of the RAF.
“Russian can do so primarily because Ireland does not have air defence capabilities to counter being penetrated,” she said.
She said that at the moment Russian actions are aimed at “intelligence gathering”, with little direct impact on Irish security.
But she added: “However, this status quo cannot be guaranteed in the future. In the case of a direct threat to the UK and the alliance as well as the increasing necessity of using capabilities elsewhere, the security of Irish airspace might be low on the list of neighbours’ and allied priorities.”
Dr Fedorchak, previously a lecturer in Military History in Maynooth University and at the Military College of the Irish Defence Forces, said air policing has the role of intercepting military aircraft of another state or of a hijacked civilian aircraft, adding that there was an “increased threat” posed civil aviation.
She said “air policing” is more appropriate to peacetime and involves monitoring and security the air space, while “control of the air” is better suited to wartime requires more systematic budgetary and military commitments.
She said air policing would require a “smaller number” of older fighter jets.
“The introduction of air policing in Irish airspace would certainly improve the security of civilian aviation and strengthen the security of the state,” she said.
She outlines three options to do this:
- Purchase of fighter jets by the State for the Air Corps, giving “substantial benefits” for Irish national security. It said the Air Corps would be able to attract more recruits and qualified specialists and would signal the security and defence self-sufficiency of the Irish state to Russian bombers and hijacked civilian aircraft;
- The current arrangement with Britain, but she warned, in a worse-case scenario, the protection of Irish airspace may not be the priority for another sovereign country;
- Request an extension of NATO air policing over Irish airspace, but she said this would be the most challenging option given the “political complexity” of making it happen Dr Fedorchak said she was convinced the first option was the best one.
Concluding, she said the undermining of international law illustrated by Russia in Ukraine suggested the necessity of “more significant domestic investment in defence”.
She said: “While control of the air might be extremely difficult to achieve within limited budgets, the air policing task would be a sufficient deterrent of current security threats. Defence has never been easy to build, but it is necessary for the stability and prosperity of the Irish state.”
Going back to maritime security, Cdr Cathal Power and Michael O’Sullivan state that the transatlantic drug trade poses a “real and current threat to Irish society”.
Mr O’Sullivan, a former garda assistance commissioner, is executive director of the Maritime Analysis Operations Centre – Narcotics (MAOC-N), which is an EU law enforcement unit with military support tasked with combating the maritime drug trade, particularly cocaine and cannabis.
Cdr Power, a naval officer, is based at Defence Forces HQ in Newbridge, Co Kildare.
Against the background of reports, including in the Irish Examiner of depleted resources in the Irish Navy, their paper submitted that “a substantial argument exists for the development of Irish assets” to Cape Verde, a string of islands in the North Atlantic used as a key trafficking point for South American cartels.
It said that the emergence of narco-submarines in European waters at the end of last year was a major development in the trafficking of cocaine.
MAOC-N has seen as exponential increase in seizures in the last three years.
The paper said that, at present, Ireland does not have a Maritime Security Strategy, but said the establishment of NASC was an “incredibly positive step towards” the development of a National Security Strategy.
The authors said a Maritime Security Strategy “must be an essential part” of the national strategy.
They said Ireland must now get more involved: “As a partner nation in MAOC (N) and an EU country cognisant of its responsibilities, Ireland now needs to step forward as the only MAOC (N) partner that has not yet committed to capacity building missions in Cape Verde.
“Ireland needs to consider the merits of deploying assets to assist in capacity building and joint operational patrolling off Cape Verde; the removal of drugs upstream, in bulk, would have an immensely positive impact on European and Irish society.”
Concluding, the authors said now was the time for Ireland to join its European partner nations “in a more overt, forward presence” in the southern part of the North Atlantic.
They said the Irish effort could be delivered through short training missions and deployments over four-to-eight weeks.
Writing about the “Atlantic order” – the transatlantic security cooperation between the EU and the US – Eoin Micheál McNamara said that Ireland’s military burden sharing at the regional security level has been “unimpressive”.
He said: “It is argued that some serious national security shortcomings particularly pertaining to airspace policing and maritime security are not only problematic for Ireland, but these vulnerabilities may also negatively affect EU and NATO partners, thus undermining Atlantic order at a time of increased geopolitical upheaval.”
He said that Russian strategy has been explained as targeting the “cracks” in Europe’s collective security frameworks and that the weakening of Ireland’s national security posture remained a concern.
Quoting researcher Gustav Gressel, Eoin Micheál McNamara, a PhD researcher at the University of Tartu in Estonia, said: “The Kremlin still has a Soviet mindset. They see neutrality as tactical. Ireland is viewed as a weak spot for the enemy and nothing more."
Mr McNamara said:
“As a particular concern for the UK’s RAF, opportunities for Russian reconnaissance to survey the reaction times of NATO members sharing Ireland’s strategic theatre are increased.” He said security in Ireland’s north Atlantic maritime hinterland has deteriorated over the past decade.
“The Irish media has reported recent Russian intelligence-gathering focused on the undersea telecommunications cables that facilitate transatlantic telephone, internet and financial exchanges,” said.
Mr McNamara, a PhD researcher at the University of Tartu in Estonia, cited estimations that 75% of the northern hemisphere’s undersea connections linking North America and Europe “pass through or near Irish waters”.
“US intelligence sources assert that the GRU – Russia’s military intelligence agency – seeks to map weak points in undersea cable networks.” He said the information gathered can be a strategic asset to strengthen espionage or to cut communications at a time of conflict.
“As a major global centre for technology companies, it is important to stress that attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) also obligates Ireland to ensure that economic activity is not risked by any serious infrastructure breach, Mr McNamara said.
He said “increased Irish naval monitoring” was required to ensure that espionage that could put the telecommunications infrastructure of Ireland, the EU and NATO at risk is prevented.
He added the impact of Covid-19 and Government advice to work from home places added stress on the infrastructure, meaning any targeted disruption carried “severe consequences”.
Concluding, he said it was “Ireland’s responsibility” to ensure that its maritime zones were not easily violated by Russian submarines.
Mr McNamara quoted reports in the Irish Examiner that the Naval Service was currently operating without “one fifth” of the personnel required to fully undertake routine tasks.
Expanding further on the maritime threats, Lt Ben Crumplin said Ireland was “not immune” from the threats posed by hybrid warfare in the maritime domain, not least from Russia, which used it extensively in its annexation of Crimea.
He said Ireland may be considered a ‘soft target’ for those who might want to damage western countries and their economies and that Ireland’s sovereignty and wellbeing was “troublingly exposed”.
In addition to the threat posed to the communication sea lines, he said threats also existed to Irish ports, with over 30 million tonnes of trade passing through them in 2017.
He said an estimated 55 million tonnes of trade between Europe and North America passed through Ireland’s area of responsibility in the same year.
He said that so-called ‘little blue sailors’ (civilian militias or paramilitary forces acting for a hostile state) could be operating in Ireland area of responsibility without knowledge of Irish authorities and pose a direct threat to both sovereignty and interests.
He said these covert forces could clandestinely enter Irish ports and disrupt trade.
In relation to the transatlantic sea-cables he said that the Russian merchant ship YANTAR – which could interfere with cables – had been reported to be loitering in the vicinity of undersea cables for no apparent reason.
He said the reputational damage to Ireland as a result of interference with cables, such as lost data, would be “significant”.
Mr McNamara said that, conceivably, the most concerning threat to Ireland’s maritime industry could be from cyber attacks, referring to the complex IT systems in both modern ports and modern vessels.
“In the context of the cyber attacks and information dominance, Ireland is vulnerable to a directed and highly concentrated information ops campaign, he said.
He said this involved a well-resourced military, complemented by dedicated civilian components.
He said Ireland’s military and naval capability should be considered of critical importance.
He said Ireland should continue to invest in its ability to conduct Maritime Defence and Security Operations through investment in vessels and maritime patrol aircraft and exploring the use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Unmanned Ariel Vehicles.
In addition, Ireland needs to develop its Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance capabilities, he said.
Lastly, Mr McNamara called for a focus on maritime interdiction, increased port security and amphibious operations to detect and remove obstructions which block ports.
“Ireland should routinely exercise its ability to locate and counter any threats to its subsea critical infrastructure, specifically deploying hardware to conduct inspections and identify any interferences in this infrastructure. The ability to build further resilience in port systems should be explored.”
Concluding, he said: Ireland’s EEZ [Exclusive Economic Zone] is vast, environmentally volatile, resource-rich and contains key communication pathways linking Europe, America, and the global commons. To counter these very real threats, Ireland must be proactive.”
Ireland is “fertile” ground for right-wing extremism and the country should start to counter the threat before it spreads, according to an academic specialising in conflict studies.
Livia Margna, who is currently working on a double degree programme in Security, Intelligence and Strategic Studies at Dublin City University, Glasgow University and Charles University Prague, said coverage of the topic in Ireland was “limited and of a fragmentary nature”.
She said this was despite there being three reported violent anti-immigration incidents in 2019 as well as a recent increase in online right-wing extremist activity.
She cited a recent report from Europol, which received prominent coverage in the Irish Examiner last June, in which the EU police agency warned of growing Irish right-wing extremist activity for the first time.
The Europol Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2020 referred to a number of incidents, including arson attacks on an Irish direct provision centre and vehicle in 2019.
“While the Garda did not publish the motives or arrested suspects, these cases assumedly concern the Rooskey immigrant housing facility, which has been twice set on fire, and the burning of Sinn Féin TD Martin Kenny’s car after he publicly championed the accommodation of refugees,” Ms Margna said.
She said a 2018 survey – on attitudes to immigration – found that Irish society was “particularly susceptible” to the bias that migrants or Muslims were to blame for socio-economic grievances.
She said Ireland had seen the mainstreaming of radical right-wing ideas in the recent emergence of parties such as the National Party, the Irish Freedom Party and Identity Ireland.
The 2018 survey, she said, showed that, compared to ten mainly Western and Central European countries, Irish-born respondents held above-average racist convictions.
Ms Margna said the gradual normalisation of anti-immigrant views created a political climate – in Ireland as in other Western countries – that was “increasingly accepting of extremism”.
Citing research, she said: “In Ireland, right-wing extremist ideology has become more widespread among internet users in the past years, with the Irish Network Against Racism registering a quadrupling of online racist incidents between 2019 and 2020.”
She said a search on some of the most popular transnational rightwing extremist online platforms revealed that Irish extremists organise in a variety of groups, offering support, recognition, and inspiration.
“The sub-thread ‘Éire’ on Stormfront, a major transnational right-wing extremist website, for instance, counts over 700,000 views and grows daily by violence-glorifying hate posts,” she said.
“On other social media platforms such as Gab or Telegram, Irish right-wing extremist groups congregate a significant audience too.”
Concluding, she said: “Ireland is therefore assessed as providing a fertile ground to the current worldwide surge in right-wing extremism.
Allowing Chinese telecoms giant Huawei access to Ireland’s new 5G mobile broadband network poses “serious and arguably unmanageable” security risks, according to a professor in UCD.
Dr Richard Maher said that because of “murky ties” the company has to the Chinese government, communist party and army, that some countries had banned it from their 5G network.
This includes the US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and, more recently, the UK.
Huawei has strongly criticised the various bans and has repeatedly rejected any claims that it posed a security threat or that its network could be compromised by Chinese intelligence.
Dr Maher, Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at UCD, said that of the three major mobile networks in Ireland, one company – Eir – had decided to use Huawei equipment in its next generation mobile network.
This is understood to be for the “non-core” part of the network, with Eir saying it was using Ericsson for the more sensitive parts.
Dr Maher said that the inclusion of Huawei equipment “in even non-core” parts created “foreseeable and unforeseeable” risks to the network and data security.
Writing in Defence Forces Review 2020, he said the decision on who should build 5G networks should not just come down to cost and reliability, but also national security. This he said was “particularly true” for Ireland, with its concentration of the world’s top tech firms and data centres, including the likes of Google, Facebook and Apple.
He said China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law required Chinese companies to “support, assist and cooperate with state intelligence work”.
He said a 2020 European Commission report warned against using 5G suppliers from a “hostile” country – though the various EU documents do not specify Huawei, or China, in any of its warnings.
Dr Maher said the US had lobbied allies and other close partners, including Ireland, to ban Huawei, threatening to cut off intelligence sharing with countries that use the company.
He said China “could gain a foothold” in the network of any country using Huawei equipment.
“As 5G promises to become a key component of states’ critical infrastructure in coming years, risks to data security and the operation of key industries multiply and expand. As a result, the damage to a country’s financial, industrial, and energy infrastructure could potentially be incalculable.”
He said notions such as core and periphery “make little sense” when talking about next-generation wireless technology.
He asked that since it was “unlikely” Ireland could replicate the UK’s ability to rigorously monitor Huawei equipment, did it have a choice but to follow London’s lead in banning it.
He said: “Ireland finds itself in a no-win position. Its decision will either strain its relationship with the United States or alienate China, which is an increasingly important trade and investment partner. Further complicating Ireland’s decision is the absence of a common EU approach toward 5G.”
Accepting that Chinese retaliation to any ban was “real”, he concluded: “Huawei’s inclusion in Ireland’s 5G network introduces serious and arguably unmanageable security risks and challenges.”