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30 years since Falklands War

Argentina is in a mess again and behaving oddly demanding latin america solidarity while imposing tarfiffs and the like CFK manages to make dave and co look competant.
 
the similarities our side are there too.

unpopular govnmt... defense cuts... navy being decimated...

in the words of the times of the last conflict... "we need a popular war if we are going to save our armed forces from being cut into insignificance"
 
CFK has probably discovered the limits of South American unity zero presidents or ambassodors turned up for her Falklands speach:D . Although invited.
hopefully things will calm down in a couple of months Urguay is starting a cargo run again so even if argentina bans the weekly flight form chile their is an alternative
 
Quartz said:
Don't forget leadership that's perceived as being weak. Except in Dave's case it's true.
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in Maggies case it was weak leadership as well - the 'backbone' that tories of a certain age get all tumescient about came from Admiral Leach, not her. she 'ummed and arghed', he said it could, and should, be done. she tied herself to the Navy, not the other way around.

the evidence for this is obvious - if she was the backbone, why did Nick Ridley go to Stanley in 1980 and seek to persuade the islanders to go Argentine? if she was the back bone, why, once the BG got solid Int that the Argentines were going for it on March 28th, did the Navy send 2 submarines with no announcement (on the 28th and 29th), rather than Maggie standing up in Parliament and saying that Britain would go to war over the FI?

personally, i don't think any British PM could have survived either failing to militarily respond, or attempted to respond and have it fail - in the former she would have lost a vote of no confidence (both the Tories and Labour were full of men with MC's from WW2 and Korea), and in the latter case she'd have had to resign.
 
kebabking said:
in Maggies case it was weak leadership as well - the 'backbone' that tories of a certain age get all tumescient about came from Admiral Leach, not her. she 'ummed and arghed', he said it could, and should, be done. she tied herself to the Navy, not the other way around.
Click to expand...

That's not what I've read. I've read that she asked and Leach told her we could and then she rallied the cabinet who were wavering, especially Pym IIRC.

the evidence for this is obvious - if she was the backbone, why did Nick Ridley go to Stanley in 1980 and seek to persuade the islanders to go Argentine?
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Because the Foreign Office wanted shot of the Falklands, and I don't think the Falklands were somewhere near the bottom of Maggie's list of priorities. You must recall that Maggie's cabinet was a coalition of Wets and Drys. I've got her autobiography here somewhere, but I don't think that's an unbiased source. :)

personally, i don't think any British PM could have survived either failing to militarily respond, or attempted to respond and have it fail - in the former she would have lost a vote of no confidence (both the Tories and Labour were full of men with MC's from WW2 and Korea), and in the latter case she'd have had to resign.
Click to expand...

I don't know. Thankfully we never had to find out. Unlike now when we can't respond short of nukes because we've no aircraft for our carriers.
 
Quartz said:
...Unlike now when we can't respond short of nukes because we've no aircraft for our carriers.
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if we did lose the Islands - difficult, indeed probably not possible - then there are options, short of nukes, that might well work.

SSN's, Ocean and Lusty with AH-64, and Type 45's... the RN might be a lot smaller than it was, but the truth is that it has the ability to deny an enemy a very large amount of air and sea space around it. a pair of - and certainly 3 - Type 45's could probably keep the Argentine Air Force away from the fleet, SSN's could deny/degrade MPA and the southern Argentine bases with TLAM, and the Argentine surface fleet would not want to get into a fight with them. it then becomes a straight fight between the Argentine garrison and 3 Cdo Bde with AH-64's in support.

the varibles are how good T45 is at shooting down anti-ship missiles, how many TLAM's the RN can get onto targets, what casualties the UK government can politically accept, and what attrition the UK task force can militarily accept before it becomes non-effective.
 
First we would have to lose the falklands and short of Argentina getting the Americans to help its not happening.

If its true about the admiralty leading the charge to war.Thats interesting as the army lead the sierra leone campaign.Both of which turned out to be short and victorious wars.The wars the politicians get us involved in don't seem to be as succesful.
 
Quartz said:
What if they had help from, say, Brazil?
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Still a big technology and experience gap.Frankly no ones tried to do an amphibious assault against a first world force.So no one knows
what would happen the British forces have a plan and a lot of kit and experince.You have to take and hold the islands from the inevitable
retaliation.Brazil at the moment can't bring anything except numbers to the fight.
 
Quartz said:
What if they had help from, say, Brazil?
Click to expand...

as DR says, its a military risk for Brazil - as well as a political and economic one. would they, nascient power though they are, really risk the kind of escalation that going against the EU might provoke?

they are powerful - carriers, subs, lots of top notch kit and the money to train their people - if they turned up we'd almost certainly lose the Islands, but is that power something they'd be willing to risk for the benefit of the Argentines?
 
Their ASW assets are not good enough to guarantee to kill an Astute class sub.Which really is what you need or your fleet becomes scrap.
Airforce does not yet have something to equal eurofighter.Without that their not getting ashore.
 
dylanredefined said:
Their ASW assets are not good enough to guarantee to kill an Astute class sub.Which really is what you need or your fleet becomes scrap.
Airforce does not yet have something to equal eurofighter.Without that their not getting ashore.
Click to expand...

it depends - yes, in qualitative terms they are well behind - the carrier flies A-4 Skyhawks, and the air force flies 12 Mirage 2000, 50 F-5's, 50 AMX, and a handful of P-3's with Harpoon and some tankers. if they were magically transported to Southern Argentina then they could give the current 4 Typhoons a good shoeing - quantity has a quality of its own, but you can't stage a deployment like that without making a lot of noise - which we're listening for, and have a plan in case we hear it.

with the SSN's, they don't need to kill them, they just need to drive them off for long enough to do their business and get home. now, currently thay don't have the ASW capability to drive off our SSN force to the satisfaction of the captain of their one and only aircraft carrier, but they are working on it - they're already upgrading the P-3's (BAES are doing it for them, they probably won't be far off Nimrod MRA4 or P-8 standard when they go back into service), they are looking to replace the A-4's with something in the F/A-18E/Rafale/SeaGrippen/MiG-29K class, and the Air Forces' F-5's will be replaced by the same aircraft. they've also been sniffing around the CVF project, and have said that they've give one of them a home if we end up selling...

if they tried it now it'd be bloody, with massive losses, but they might succeed. if they try it in 10 years it would be far more evenly matched (unless we've got F-35 on the Islands or on CVF - in which case they'd be fcuked), their losses would be far fewer, and they'd have a much greater likelyhood of success.
 
Pingu said:
it would give us a great excuse to pull forces out of afghanistan too...
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Typhoon was supposed to replace the Harriers in Afghanistan - nothing to do with a sales pitch by BAEs you understand - but the plan changed quite suddenly to using Tornado instead and concentrating Typhoons work up on Air Defence roles, which of course include the Falklands detachment...

it is an issue, although the forces used in the two locations are different - mostly the Army in Afghanistan, and mostly the RN and RAF in the FI - we're going to be stretching our logistics capability (cargo aircraft, passenger aircraft, and tankers) to the absolute limit to keep both in operation if we decide that the FI force needs to be increased.

interesting that in the midst of all the defence cuts, the PM recently announced that we'd be buying another C-17 aircraft, and that it'd arrive pretty quickly...
 
dylanredefined said:
Still a big technology and experience gap.Frankly no ones tried to do an amphibious assault against a first world force.So no one knows
what would happen the British forces have a plan and a lot of kit and experince.You have to take and hold the islands from the inevitable
retaliation.Brazil at the moment can't bring anything except numbers to the fight.
Click to expand...

I had once had good times go bad on an Tornado F.3/tanker trail to the FI. I diverted into an FAB base in Brazil that will remain nameless. The Brazilian Air Force struck me as brilliant at hospitality but not exactly a crack fighting force - very reminiscent of my experiences with the Jordanians in both those regards.

They threw us a hell of a party the night before we finally left and the next morning my nav was hanging off his O2 mask burning his hangover out. To salute their status of outstanding hosts we gave them a flypast which was considerably faster and lower than I intended due an unfamiliar HUD config. When I looked in the canopy mirrors I could see corrugated iron roofs from the shanty town at the end of the runway being ripped off by our wake. Desculpe...
 
kebabking said:
they're already upgrading the P-3's (BAES are doing it for them, they probably won't be far off Nimrod MRA4 or P-8 standard when they go back into service)
Click to expand...

The Brazilian P-3AM upgrade is being done by Airbus Military at Getafe in Spain not British Leyland Aerospace.
 
Cant see why Brasil would get involved nothing in it for them at all.
argentina isnt the best of pals with latin america.
We play badly in europe but havnt started a trade warvyet.
 
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