Quote:
Originally Posted by RN7
Personally I think the Irish armed forces would be crazy taking on Britain in any circumstances as their forces are inferior in almost every category. There would be die hard Republican elements even within the armed forces who probably would attack the north before actually thinking of the consequences. Northern Ireland's paramilitary security forces alone are probably equal in strenghth to the Irish armed forces, and the Northern Protestant mentality has been preparing for a "Catholic" invasion since the 19th century.
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I've always agreed with that point of view, which is one of the reasons my original work has always not had an invasion of the North by the Republic. However recently I've come round to the way of thinking that it is part of the T2K canon so whilst we may find it implausible I think I made an error in not including it in my Alternative version of the SGUK (I think someone mentioned a number of equally implausible events in another thread recently).
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Langham
IRL there was a plan to launch a rapid attack if things deteriorated in the north (unfortunately I don't have the source handy). It was considered in 1969 before Op Banner started.
In TW2000 there isn't a British Army presence as such as it has been withdrawn. In its place is the UDR which is rolled and trained for internal security duties.
It is not unrealistic to think that they could decide it was possible and achievable, particularly if Catholic repression in the north made it politically expedient.
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I think it was code named Excercise Armageddon. There's quite a bit on the web about it these days
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Armageddon
I agree that if stories / rumours start circulating in the south about alleged massacres taking place in the north that
could act as a catalyst to send the Irish Army over the border. I don't think it would even need to come in the shape of an official order from Dublin - all it might take to spark it off is for one Irish Battalion CO to decide to take action and it could rapidly spiral out of control, particularly since HMG at the time is virtually decapitated (whether you use canon timeline or mine). The Irish Government may be horrified at what they've started but even if they wanted to try and bring things back under control there's no one for them to talk to in the UK. And, initially, at least the Irish make good inroads into the North, so even if the Irish Government (I'm gonna start calling that EIRGOV for short!) didn't intend to start a War they may not want to stop when they see how it progresses in the opening months at least.