Recently, the Irish government purchased a new executive jet for the use of its "Taoiseach" - which is Gaelic for "Prime Minister" and, if I remember Ed's pronunciation when we had a radio show and he was taking Irish Gaelic classes, is pronounced "Tulsa" or "Tuscon" or "Toscanini" or something like that (closed circuit note to Ed — please correct), to serve as the Irish equivalent of "Air Force One":
The Dassault Falcon 6X , used for a range of operations but primarily to transport the Taoiseach and government ministers, is operated by the Irish Air Corps from Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnell.
As such, the plane's job — let's call it "Air Corps One" just for fun — is going to be to fly Irish government nabobs wherever they need to be, to do whatever the Irish government's officials need to do. The plane costs €53 million (about $61 million), and can go anywhere and do anything a head of state's transport needs to do.
As long as the weather is clear.
Because it's going to have a hard time landing in fog — at least, doing it safely.
It's not a problem with the Dassault Falcon itself. The plane includes as standard equipment the state of the art avionics that allow it to take off, fly and land 24/7 in any weather — as long as you don't go taking any of its avionics out.
Which the Irish goverment went and did.
Was it because they weren't worried about fog?
That'd be weird — Ireland is an infamously foggy place. Foggier than London or Glasgow? If Fog were an Olympic event, England, Scotland and Ireland would dominate the sport like Norway, Germany and Austria dominate skiing. And the rest of Europe isn't far behind — outside high summer much of Europe, especially the bits near the coast (like, Brussels, where the European Union headquarters is located, and will likely be one of the Taoiseach's primary destinations) are as foggy as the last scene in Casablanca (set in an infamously non-foggy country, by the way).
It's not a remotely idle concern. In 2010, the Polish government's official presidential jet crashed in dense fog in Smolensk, killing the nation's President Lech Kaczyński and First Lady Maria Kaczyńska and much of his staff and triggering a political crisis. The crash was chalked up to pilot error tied to the pilot's inability to see the ground, much less the runway.
Fortunately, the Falcon 6X comes with "FalconEye", a device that helps pilots to see through fog and other bad weather.
Unfortunatley, the Irish government specifically ordered the plane without FalconEye.
So why would the Irish government rip out the gizmos that allows their $61million jet to operate in most of Northwestern Europe, most of the time?
You get one guess, and if you guess "The Jooooooooooooooooz", you can never go far wrong:
🇮🇪🇮🇱 Ireland’s new €53 million government jet was delivered without an Israeli-made landing system that helps aircraft operate in heavy fog.
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 4, 2026
The Falcon 6X, used to transport the Taoiseach and ministers, arrived without the FalconEye enhanced vision system produced by Israel’s…
A new Irish government jet may struggle to land in bad weather, because it was ordered without key equipment from an Israeli firm, according to a report in Irish outlet The Journal.
The 53 million euro (61 million USD) Dassault Falcon 6X aircraft would normally include Elbit’s FalconEye low-visibility system, a system of cameras and censors that gives pilots additional information amid fog or darkness.
In August 2024, Ireland said it would no longer award Israeli companies defense contracts, citing an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
According to the report, Ireland would have had to enter a written agreement with the Israeli company in order to have the system included, and “procurement officials determined this was a step too far.”
If, heaven forbid, the unthinkable happens, the crew of the Irish jet won't have the signals from the Israeli avionics to help them.
Maybe the Irish Defense ministry is working on equipment that can home in on virtue-signaling?
