In late November 2013, two months after their arrival in Syria as part of a United Nations observation force, Irish Defence Forces troops had their first contact with hostile forces.
The patrol comprising 36 troops travelling in five Mowag armoured personnel carriers (APCs) were ambushed by an armed Islamic group about 25km from their camp in the Golan Heights, the rocky plateau in southwestern Syria overseen by UN peacekeepers supervising a ceasefire between Israel and Syria since 1974.
The soldiers went to return fire using the heavy mounted machine guns on the vehicles’ roofs. However, when the gunners on two of the APCs cocked the weapons, they heard a snap. The internal cables broke, making the weapons useless.
Fortunately for the patrol, the guns on the other three Mowags still worked and were enough to drive off the attackers. One APC lost a wheel when it hit a landmine as they withdrew but there were no Irish injuries. Replacement parts for the guns were urgently dispatched from Ireland, stowed in the personal baggage of a soldier.
It was the type of incident that still keeps Alan Kearney, a former Defence Forces weapons specialist, up at night 13 years later.
For Kearney, who retired from the Army at the rank of commandant last year, the incident spoke to the often slapdash approach by the Defence Forces to equipment procurement and maintenance.
The cocking cables were a known point of failure in the weapons, but this was ignored. And the weapons systems were sent to a war zone without adequate spare parts.
The incident was a “direct and foreseeable consequence” of procuring a custom weapons system without the ability to support it, he says.
Now, with the Defence Forces about to acquire billions of euro in new equipment under chief of staff Lieut Gen Rossa Mulcahy as part of a modernisation programme, Kearney worries the same mistakes will be repeated.
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These mistakes include purchasing equipment without the necessary personnel to maintain it or a clear plan of how it will be used. The result is sometimes expensive military systems that sit in storage for years.
Kearney has detailed many of these concerns in a damning report he is to submit to the Oireachtas Committee on Defence and National Security and the Public Accounts Committee.
“I’m all for ambition. But this is a complete and utter transformation. It’s not just buying a few vehicles. It is enormous,” says Kearney.
For the army, one of the biggest aspects of this modernisation is the Scorpion programme involving the acquisition of hundreds of cutting-edge armoured vehicles from France as part of a government-to-government deal.
A final decision has yet to be made on the number of armoured vehicles to be purchased. This will depend on the results of a project overseen by a board of military officers and civilian servants who will devise the requirements. Even more important will be how much funding the Department of Public Expenditure is willing to allocate to the project.
Sources familiar with the purchasing plans say a figure of more than 550 vehicles is being recommended by military planners, far higher than the previously reported figure of between 300 and 400.
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Vehicles to be acquired under the proposed deal will include the Griffon, a six-wheel APC; the Serval, which is a smaller four-wheeled armoured car; and the Jaguar, a tank-like “armoured fighting vehicle” equipped with a large turreted gun.
The new armour programme will transform the Irish Army from a light infantry force with limited armoured elements, to a partially mechanised force equipped with modern armour and heavier weaponry.
“Where are they going to go? Who is going to maintain them? Who is going to fix the guns?” says Kearney.
He points to the fact that the Army is desperately short of enlisted personnel specialising in vehicle maintenance. Numbers are slowly growing but it takes years to build up the experience necessary for the upkeep of a large, armoured fleet, he says.
“It’s a recipe for disaster,” he adds.
Then there is the ancillary equipment and infrastructure needed for such a fleet.
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“When the Mowag armoured fleet was introduced, infrastructure and sustainment capacity lagged behind the vehicles themselves, creating logistical challenges that required years to resolve,” says Kearney.
Workshops in the Curragh in Co Kildare, the primary military base of the Defence Forces, were initially too small for the APCs, while there were persistent issues with obtaining spare parts. This meant many of the vehicles’ optical systems were unusable for years.
“It took years to stabilise and that fleet was far simpler than Scorpion,” says Kearney.
These problems were seen on a more serious scale in the fleet of light armoured tactical vehicles purchased for the Defence Forces in 2008.
The 27 vehicles broke down frequently and were extremely difficult to maintain. On one occasion in 2011, a light tactical armoured vehicle (LTAV) went on fire while it was being driven on the motorway. As a result, they were used sparingly, with some vehicles going years without being driven.
Earlier this month, the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, the State’s spending watchdog, found millions of euro in public funds was wasted in the purchase of the LTAVs. The Department of Defence, which is led by Minister Helen McEntee, said it had “learned lessons from this procurement”.
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Procurement failings are not just confined to the Army. Senior naval officers have expressed frustration with the purchase of two second-hand patrol vessels from New Zealand that have been plagued by problems since their arrival two years ago, including serious issues with the hulls.
In the Air Corps, all four of the PC-12 aircraft purchased in 2020 for close to €50 million are currently out of service due to maintenance issues.
Perhaps the clearest example of military shortsightedness was the Gulfstream aircraft purchased in the 1990s for transporting government ministers.
For years the Air Corps lacked a hangar big enough to store the aircraft. The solution was to cut a hole in an existing hangar, leaving the plane’s tail exposed outside leading to corrosion in the airframe of the aircraft.
That problem involved just one aircraft and one hangar but took years to resolve, Kearney points out.
“The proposed Scorpion programme involves hundreds of platforms across multiple sites,” he says.
Many other examples can be found across the military, such as shotguns purchased for military police officers and night vision scopes for machine guns which sat in stores for years without being used because no one was sure what purpose they were intended to serve.
However, history does not have to repeat itself and it is possible lessons have been learned from these mistakes.
Nicholas Moran, an Irish-American armoured vehicle expert and US National Guard officer, says there will be a significant delay in the delivery of any Scorpion vehicles to Ireland and that “there should be ample time to create a support structure”.
“Where that support structure will be, though, is an issue,” he says. “Can you fit 80 large [armoured fighting vehicles] in Renmore or Cathal Brugha [Barracks]?” he says, referring to the Defence Forces locations in Galway and Dublin.
It is not clear how much the Scorpion programme will cost. Estimates have ranged from €400 million to €1 billion. If at least 550 vehicles are to be purchased, the cost will likely be much more, particularly when maintenance and parts are factored in.
In 2018, Belgium entered a deal to purchase 442 Scorpion programme vehicles from France with an announced cost of €1.6 billion.
Last year, Belgium’s spending watchdog excoriated the deal and found the total lifetime cost of the vehicles will be more than €14 billion. This includes €60 million a year on maintenance.
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Whatever purchase price is announced by the Irish Government for the vehicles will be “a drop in the ocean” compared to the lifetime cost, Kearney says.
The acquisition of some 550 vehicles would allow the Army to transform one of its two brigades into a fully armoured fighting force supported by advanced artillery system.
Another question about the purchases is: why?
Ireland is a militarily neutral country. For decades, the focus of its military has been on peacekeeping operations and, until 1998, responding to paramilitary activity.
What need does it have for hundreds of sophisticated combat vehicles?
The official doctrine for the Defence Forces says Ireland must be able to deter or resist any attack on the State until the international community steps in.
Its latest published version of the doctrine states that deterrence requires “the maintenance of a credible military capability to convince potential aggressors that the consequences of hostile activity targeted against Irish sovereignty and territorial integrity would outweigh any potential gains”.
The statement is undoubtedly ambitious. As the document notes, the Defence Forces is equipped for “constabulary and overseas tasks, rather than for a conventional territorial defence”.
But the development of a highly mobile brigade equipped with the most modern equipment money can buy would move the Defence Forces more into the realm of a conventional war fighting force.
Another consideration for military planners is Ireland’s contribution to European defence initiatives, specifically the EU’s Rapid Deployment Capacity, commonly known as the EU Battlegroups.
These are units of about 1,500 combat troops designed to deploy to trouble spots within 10 days. The objective of the groups is to respond to humanitarian crises and act in emergency peace support roles, although critics argue they are a precursor to the EU military command.
A modern Irish armoured fleet, built by an EU member and designed from the ground up to integrate with Nato forces, would be warmly welcomed by Battlegroup commanders.
Moran, the US tank expert, believes the vehicles could serve a wide variety of roles.
He says the purpose of an armoured personnel carrier is “the safe transportation of troops in a hostile area” and that could include “a nation intent on an incursion on to Ireland’s territory, unfriendly forces on a peacekeeping mission, or to move troops to an eastern European battlefield as part of a multinational force”.
“The bottom line is that the fewer troops you have not under armoured protection as they move, the safer it is for them,” he says.
Asked about the programme to upgrade the armoured fleet, the Department of Defence said: “A whole-of-capability approach is being adopted, integrating vehicle procurement with doctrine, training, infrastructure, personnel and interoperability requirements.
“As the programme remains in the assessment phase, specifications, role, fleet size, timelines, costs, training arrangements and support requirements remain subject to ongoing negotiations and the necessary approval processes.”
Regardless of how they will be used, the military needs vehicles capable of standing up to modern threats, says Mark Mellett, the Defence Forces former chief of staff.
“The Mowags have level three armour protection. Most armoured fleets are up around level five. We have to move into that space,” the retired admiral says.