28 Janvier 2015 Source : Marine nationale

Du 24 au 27 janvier 2015, le Bâtiment de Commandement et de Ravitaillement (BCR) Somme  a fait escale à Dublin. L’occasion pour la France de renforcer sa coopération militaire et diplomatique avec l’Irlande, et de remettre la Légion d’Honneur à M. Michael d’Alton, vétéran irlandais du débarquement de juin 1944.

Le lundi 26 janvier, M. Michael D’Alton, vétéran irlandais de la seconde guerre mondiale, s’est vu remettre l’insigne de Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur par Monsieur Jean-Pierre Thebault, ambassadeur de France en Irlande, lors d’une cérémonie donnée à bord du BCR Somme, alors en escale à Dublin.

Près de 70 ans après la fin du conflit mondial, la France a rendu hommage au courage et au dévouement d’un homme qui s’est battu pour défendre les valeurs de la liberté et œuvrer à la libération de l’Europe sur le sol français. C’est en présence de ses proches et de nombreux vétérans et membres réservistes de l’Irish Navy Association, venus saluer son courage, que Michael d’Alton, l’un des derniers survivants du D-Day, a été décoré. Les représentants de nombreux pays étrangers et des forces armées irlandaises sont venus, en nombre, lui rendre hommage, et entretenir le souvenir commun.

Aujourd’hui âgé de 93 ans, Michael D’Alton a 18 ans lorsqu’il s’engage au sein de la Royal Navy pour combattre l’Allemagne nazie. Commandant en second d’un engin de débarquement, il est missionné pour faire débarquer les tanks Sherman vers le secteur américain d’Omaha Beach le 6 juin 1944. Une partie de son équipage se noiera après que l’embarcation a sauté sur une mine allemande. M. d’Alton a tenu à dédier sa décoration aux nombreux frères d’armes qui ont débarqué à ses côtés sur les plages de Normandie en Juin 1944, ainsi qu’à tous les vétérans encore en vie plus de 70 ans après le D-Day.

Discret et fortement marqué par les combats dont il parlera très peu à ses proches après la guerre,  la participation de M. d’Alton au débarquement de Normandie serait restée méconnue sans les travaux de recherche sur les vétérans conduits par les archives militaires américaines. Michael d’Alton a affirmé que cette remise de décoration était un appel à se faire connaître, lancé à tous les vétérans irlandais s’étant battus en France pendant la seconde guerre mondiale.

Vienna - 05 September, 2014 European Defence Agency

The first multinational European exercise  focusing on manual neutralisation of explosive devices, European Guardian 2014,  started this week in Vienna, Austria.

The exercise, which runs from 1- 12 September, brings together explosive disposal experts from five countries, the lead nation Austria, Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Sweden.

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, present a challenge to Explosive Ordnance Disposal operators. This is particularly true when there is little time to render the  device safe or when the circumstances make it impossible to use different means but the operator’s skills to safely defuse the device.

In order to tackle these highly dangerous situations, and to deal with complex devices, operators need to have a high level of experience and training. European Guardian 2014 is designed to provide the specialist training that experts from EDA Member States require.

European Guardian is part of the EDA’s Manual Neutralisation Training Courses & Exercise (MNT C&E) Programme. MNT C&E is designed to provide exercises and training courses to experienced Improvised  Explosives Devises Disposal (IEDD) operators in order to accomplish proper threat assessments and course action planning as well to analyse complex IED’s in different circumstances.

Jun 11, 2014 ASDNews Source : Saab AB

Defence and security company Saab has signed a contract with the Irish Defence Forces to provide upgrades to Ireland’s RBS 70 air defence missile systems. The order has a value of approximately SEK 40 million and includes deliveries of improved firing units, new simulators, night vision equipment and associated weapons support.

Ireland has requested updates to its RBS 70 systems. This recently-signed contract provides for new operator training simulators, upgraded fire units to support the BORC night-capable sight and the latest Bolide missile, new external power supplies plus a four-year support agreement. The Irish order underlines the continuous enhancement of RBS 70 system capabilities.

Read more

Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Sweden signed today a Letter of Intent expressing their interest in pooling resources and expertise for the setting up of a shared C-IED Manual Neutralisation Techniques courses and exercises capacity. Improvised Explosive Devices continue to pose significant threat to military and civilian personnel. In some cases complex explosive devices have to be neutralised manually.

With today’s letter of intent, the signatory countries express their interest to cooperate in the development of a project arrangement and to participate in the project. 

More information

• Project page Counter-IED

February 11, 2013 Suzanne LYNCH, European Correspondent - The Irish Times

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) would welcome any application by Ireland to join the organisation, its secretary general has said, although he stressed that the decision to seek membership was a matter for each individual country.

In an interview with The Irish Times ahead of the first visit to Ireland by a Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Nato had an “open-door policy” towards membership of the organisation.

“Our door remains open for European countries, European democracies that fulfil the necessary criteria and can contribute to Euro-Atlantic security, but of course it’s for individual partners to decide how they want to develop their relationship and partnership with Nato.”

Bilateral programme

While Ireland is not a member of Nato, it has ties with the organisation through the Partnership for Peace Programme (PFP), a bilateral programme that allows for Irish forces to be used for peacekeeping and crisis management where there is a UN mandate and parliamentary approval.

Mr Rasmussen travels to Dublin tomorrow for an informal meeting of EU defence ministers at Dublin Castle.

He will also deliver a speech at the Institute of European Affairs tomorrow evening at which he is expected to call for further co-operation between Ireland and Nato, particularly in the area of military training and capability.

Highlighting the participation of Irish defence forces in UN-led operations over the last 50 years, including in Afghanistan, Mr Rasmussen is expected to outline how Ireland has benefited from its relationship with Nato, arguing that the PFP has allowed Ireland to contribute to international missions, something it would be unable to do on its own.

Mr Rasmussen said he would “absolutely” welcome any decision by Ireland to seek membership of the organisation, although he said “it is for Ireland to decide its relationship with Nato or any other organisation . . . We have a very well functioning partnership between Ireland and Nato, a partnership that fully respects Ireland’s policy of neutrality,” he said.

Mr Rasmussen also said Nato had “no intention” of intervening in north Africa. “I don’t see a role for Nato in Mali, because the UN Security Council has adopted a resolution according to which an African-led stabilisation security force should take over in Mali.”

However, he welcomed the EU’s decision to send a training mission to the North African country, adding that the best international response to crises was “a question of a smart division of labour, so that we do not compete with each other, but complement each other”.

Crisis in Syria

Mr Rasmussen defended Nato’s approach to Syria. “Very often I am asked, ‘Why is it that you could collect a successful operation in Libya and why not in Syria?’ and the answer is, there is a clear difference.

“In Libya we had a United Nations mandate, we had support from countries in the region, but in Syria these conditions are not fulfilled. Even the opposition in Syria doesn’t request a foreign military intervention. You have to make decisions case by case. Each and every time you have to ask yourself whether a military intervention will lead in the right direction, and in Syria, obviously, we need a political solution.”

Nato currently has 28 member states.

Nato: What it's for

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was founded in April 1949 in the aftermath of the second World War, as the cold war between the capitalist West and communist East was tightening its grip on international relations.

Nato is headquartered in Brussels and has 28 member states and 22 associated nations, one of which is Ireland, participating in the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme.

PfP is a voluntary association for – mainly but not exclusively – military co-operation and planning, civil emergency planning and disaster relief.

The organisation was opposed by the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance between the Soviet Union and eastern European communist states founded in 1955, after the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was inducted into Nato.

Critics charge that the pact was essentially an instrument of Russian domination of eastern Europe following the second World War.

In 1956, Russian troops invaded Hungary and ousted a liberalising government there; in 1968, pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia for the same purpose.

The pact fell apart following the collapse of communism and ceased existence in 1991. Nato member states were expected to be democracies.

The founding member states of Nato were: the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal. They were joined in 1952 by Greece and Turkey, in 1955 by Germany, 1982 by Spain, 1999 by the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Finally, in 2009, Albania and Croatia joined.

In essence, the alliance is a mutual defence organisation whose essential fundamental principle, Article 5 of the establishing treaty, is that an attack on one member state is an attack on all. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US is the only occasion in which Article 5 has been invoked, leading ultimately to the deployment of the Nato-led, United Nations-mandated ISAF, the interim stabilisation force in Afghanistan.

Nato is governed day to day by the North Atlantic Council in Brussels drawn from member states’ permanent representative delegations in Brussels.

The alliance also has a parliamentary tier, the Nato Parliamentary Assembly of 257 delegates from the 28 Nato member countries, and meets twice a year. It sets the broad strategic goals of the alliance.

Nato remains the world’s largest military alliance and accounts for about half of all defence spending.* - PETER MURTAGH

*This article was edited on February 11th 2013 to correct a factual error