Sir, – Conor Hogarty welcomes the planned upgrade of detection capabilities on Irish naval vessels, but questions the lack of weapons systems to deal with threats such as Russian submarines (“What next when the Navy detects a threat?”, Letters, March 25th). A subsequent letter writer states, quite rightly, that “without weapons for the Naval Service, our bark will be worse than our bite” (Letters, March 27th). Enhancing our naval “detection” and “bite” with better weapons and improved Sonar is logical. However, it ignores the skeletal state of the Naval Service’s personnel numbers. Before we worry about what our ships can do, we must address the fact that we barely have enough crew to get them away from the wall.

Source: The Irish Times March 28, 2026 12:37 UTC