Ireland Signs an Acquisition Order With France's DGA for Five Thales Long-Range Deployable Radars
Dublin, 18 September 2026
Key points
- Ireland's Department of Defence said on 18 September it had signed an Acquisition Order with the Direction générale de l'armement, the procurement arm of the French armed forces ministry, for "five deployable Thales long-range radar systems, commencing next year, with the full capability in place by the end of 2028"
- Helen McEntee, the defence minister: the order keeps Ireland "on track to deliver a complete Recognised Air Picture of Irish airspace by the end of 2028"
- The release names no radar type and gives no cost; Irish press put the whole three-part Military Radar Programme at EUR 300 million to EUR 500 million
- The government opened government-to-government talks with France in December 2025 and approved the first part of the final business case in July, "including the early signing of Acquisition Orders"
Ireland, which has no primary radar able to see an aircraft that switches off its transponder, has bought one from the French state and expects it complete in a little over two years.
The programme has three elements: land-based long-range primary radar, ground-based air defence including counter-drone systems, and ship-borne maritime radar. Friday's order covers the first. The second was accelerated in July so that counter-drone equipment arrives ahead of Ireland's EU presidency; Irish press reports, citing sources, that MBDA will supply the air-defence element. The third is still described as future development. The Commission on the Defence Forces made a primary radar capability an immediate priority, and McEntee said in December that a government-level approach was "the only feasible way for Ireland to develop the required radar capabilities". No sites have been disclosed.
Buying through the DGA is the instructive part: a militarily neutral state outside NATO has chosen to have a NATO member's procurement agency contract on its behalf, and has taken the whole sensor-to-shooter chain from one country's industry without a competition. The route is fast, which is what Dublin wanted, and it hands Paris the design of Ireland's air-defence architecture for a generation, radar now and missiles next. It also sharpens a question the radar alone cannot answer. By the end of 2028 the Defence Forces will see an unidentified track in the western approaches and will own nothing that can climb to look at it; the Air Corps flies turboprop trainers. A recognised air picture without an interceptor is a picture that gets passed to someone else, and the arrangement under which that happens has never been set out in public by an Irish government. The ground-based element is where the programme stops being surveillance. Signal No. 150 noted that the announcement names no type. The type matters less than the customer of record on the missile contract that follows: a second French government order would make the architecture a single bilateral dependency by design.
