The current Argentinian Administrationis making “Falklands are ours” noises. Are the Argentines any more formidable than they werelast time?
…about the “sacred” “Malvinas”! The only reason for anybody wanting these godforsaken rocks, is if there is OIL under them.
So, if the Argentines really go to war again, it must be for this reason.
If the Argentines learned anything from the last war, it would be to have lots and lots of anti-ship missiles on hand. Probably the UK could still beat them but it might be a very messy business.
I think the inhabitants might take a view on the matter. This being GQ, I’ll say no more.
The only reason the Argentine government is making noise (apart from the 26 year memorial last week) is due to current economic comedy. The gov went on a huge spending spree prior to the elections and now are doing a smash and grab on any business making money to replenish the coffers. They recently renaged on some fixed tax rates for mining and bumped the export tax for soy up to 45% and have almost driven meat exports to a halt. The wiseness of shutting down a countries prime source of export revenue is no doubt another debate. That said the farmers were all on strike for the last few weeks and food in the capital (where a significant chunk of the population live) was certainly getting scarce to the point of no meat for the sunday Asado.This pissed a lot of people right off, and there were protest on the streets. Anyway the gov and the farmers were in some pretty tense negotiations, right up until the gov said, well the last time the farmers went on strike, the army took over the country and look what happened then. So the farmers backed down.
So in short the gov is not looking popular so they start the Malvinas are Argentine routine in the hope to distract everyone. Now I am not sure if irony is the right word to use, but in light of the farmers caused the military to take power line they pulled, the militarty junta also tried to distract the population from a bollocksed up econmy by invading the Falklands.
Ok anyway not the answer to your question but hey ho.
The Argentine navy is not really up to much, the air force is pretty well screwed, there have been several crashes due to poor maintenance, so they are not in a position to pull off nay of the success they had against the Royal Navy with the exocet. I am not sure if they have actually upgraded from that somewhat dated missile anyway. Qute a few of thse lanes came from Peru and Venezula. Chavez from Venezula has been on a military hardware spending spree and I heard he was trying to buy some russian submarines. In the very unlikly event this scenario came to being, I would guess he would throw them in with the Argentine navy. If he maintaines them as well as he has done with the Venezulan economy, we could probably expect them to sink on the way out of the port.
Hardware aside there is not really much of a desire for a fight anyway. There are economic problems, but no where near as bad as they were in 1982, or 2001.
On the oil comment, there is indeed a very high quality source rock in the basins around the Falklands. However no one has discovered a suitable trap yet, so it is still very much up in the air if good reservoirs exist, or if all the oil leached away a million years ago. Serveral companies are running seismic and doing electromagnetic surveys.
Sorry I know this is GQ, just got carried away.
If I were British, I’d be a Labourite, but I must say they’ve unwisely made some very deep cuts to the Royal Navy in recent years, and the RN would now be hard-pressed to mount the kind of effort it did in 1982. Given the decline of the Argentine armed forces as well, a Falklands War II might be a much smaller affair than the first time 'round.
Nobody gave the Argies a shout last time, yet they came with a few more exploding bombs of winning the thing. The Brits are superior in tech, but we saw last time what the small but superd Argentine Airforce could do to the RN’s ships (even with the AN in port after the Belgarano incident) so it would be very interesting.
[HIJACK (sorry)]
Is “Argentine” the current usage? I’ve always said “Argentinian”, with “Argentine” reserved for historical or poetic usage, similar to “Arabian” versus “Arab”.
[/HIJACK]
Apart from the overcommitment of UK military forces at present, the current UK govt may want another distraction as well …
Si
We don’t want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do
We’ve got the ships
We’ve got the men
We’ve got the money too!
Actually, we don’t have the ships.
Er, haven’t got the men either.
And we don’t have the money.
But, by Jingo!
The subject was raised on another board I post to. My thought was that the Argentinian air force would be a bit more exposed than it was in 1982. The Argentinian Navy lacks a carrier so all sorties would have to be done from the mainland. The RN now has access to cruise missiles, so even on home soil, the Argentinian planes would be vulnerable.
If the RN could get it together to have some sort of early warning system in place, they would be more likely to be able to fend off air attacks.
The new Type 45’s do just that (the first, HMS Daring, comes into service next year). We’ll also soon have two new aircraft carriers.
There’s also an RAF base on the Falklands, now, Mount Pleasant, with a SAM air defence detachment and a number of Torndoes.
I doubt these CVAs will ever be built. The whole principle seems to be up in the air yet again.
We couldn’t mount a 1982 type expedition any more. The navy isn’t big enough, “And a good thing, too”, many in the Labour Party would say, “If we haven’t got the capability then we won’t be tempted to get involved in these imperialistic wars. We should turn the islands over to their rightful owners and wash our hands of the thing”.
France, right?
Hate to say it, but that is one fugly warship.
AK84, a history of the Falklands War I read recently said that British troops actually on the islands were close to starving by the time the Argentinian forces surrendered, due to supply problems. The author suggested that, had the Arg. military targetted the big supply ships and not warships, the British might have had to break off the attack earlier. “Amateurs talk tactics, experts talk logistics,” or so I’ve heard it said.
See the claims made in 1817, based upon occupancy by American sealers.
At present we would be hard pushed to launch a large campaign to liberate the Islands, however the Islands now have a much better military set up. With the RFA Base and larger detatchments of troops ect…
Some well placed bombs could well have played havoc on the RFA (RN Civilian Logistic Ships) They did destroy two of our troop ships, RFA Galahad being the most well known. There is a book available called ‘No Sea Too Rough’ Which is the story of the RFA in the Falklands war. In one picture taken from the deck of RFA Fort Austin (Still Sailing as are many others) A huge plume of water is being thrown into the air not 15m from the ship. If that bomb had hit the Austin she would have gone up and taken anything near with her: she was stocked full of ammo. That bomb could have won the war.
It is quite interesting how well the supply chain worked considering that the war happened shortly after a round of job cuts; men went to war with notices in thier pockets. Some of it was a bit hap-hazard, torpedoes in swimming pools, home made AA launchers, Chinese laundry men in over thier heads, and a good helping of luck.
‘No sea too rough, no job too tough’
This thread makes me feel better in one way:
I’ve often complained that the US has astonishingly little effective military force for the fantastic level of military spending we have. But apparently everyone else is even worse off, if Britain- supposedly the second most powerful navy in the world- would find it difficult to engage even as unworthy a foe as Argentina.
Why do you say that? The U.S. military can walk over any country we choose and that has been demonstrated time and time again. Before Gulf War 1, Iraq was ranked as the 4th strongest military in the world and the war was decided in days if not hours. Saddam Hussein was a true Hitler figure with delusions of grandeur who never even got a foothold into Kuwait let alone Saudi Arabia as planned. If the U.S. was not there, world history would have been changed for the worst and we would have been looking at a new style of World War III. Few people realize how dire the situation was. Let’s not even get into WWII where the U.S. military literally saved the world.
I don’t see how the U.S. military that can project any amount of force including absolute destruction on short notice can ever be labeled as incompetent or ineffective. The military is meant to destroy things. You can’t get more destructive than leveling entire cities or countries either strategically or as a whole.
What I think you are saying is that the U.S. military has not been entirely successful at nation building like in Iraq. That is completely true but that isn’t the mission of any military. Militaries destruct instead of construct. That seems to fail many people up unto the highest levels of our government even though it is incredibly basic.
What in the world would give you the idea that our military is ineffective?
And don’t say Iraq, because that’s both uninformed and wrong.
Our military, when fighting other militaries (which is what it is designed and trained to do, not counterinsurgency and “hearts and minds” type stuff), the US military is second to none.
Look at it this way: The Brits would apparently be hard-pressed to invade the Falklands again.
We could do it with a Marine Expeditionary Brigade (of which we have several), and likely with ships on hand in the Atlantic Fleet, without having to resort to the Pacific Fleet.
And, if we brought a carrier battle group, we’d be bringing something like 3x the planes to bear compared to the British in 1982/83.