Several thoughts on W’s original post and a possible future Falklands conflict between the U.K. and Argentines:
If the current twit on Downing street has the fortitude to dispute an attempted invasion by force of arms, just the Royal Navy’s fleet of nuclear submarines and infiltration by a few companies of SAS, Royal Marines, etc. could win such a war, if the political will were there.
The Argentines have EXTREMELY limited effective ASW assets against Trafalgar class SSNs, to say nothing of Astute class SSNs.
The Falklands are hundreds of miles from the mainland. Any Argentine invasion without sustained resupply by sea would effectively strand however many light infantrymen they chose to send. The Falklands are large and rugged enough to swallow 100,000+ infantrymen without achieving any effective tactical control.
The RN submarines can easily impose a quarantine on the the Falklands area.
The Royal Navy Submarines are equipped with Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM). That means that any barracks, command and control, strong points or depots established by the Argentines on the Falklands are likely to go ‘splode’ with alarming regularity while SAS and Royal Marines cause the same to happen to people and places using mortars, C-4 and .50 Cal sniper rifles.
British snipers have demonstrated impressive “real world” accuracy at long range sniping in Afghanistan recently. I doubt the Argentine military has any idea how quickly troop morale can be devestated by intermittant deadly accurate sniper fire from 2000 meters away that can’t be stopped or even found in most cases.
In addition, the TLAM equipped SSNs could target critical facilities in Buenos Aires or anywhere else within several hundred miles of the coast. This could take out oil refining, electrical power, military command and control, El Presidente’s scheduled speeches (& El Presidente), critical rail & road bridges, television & radio towers, and airports. There are relatively few Argentinian airports with large storage fascilities for jet and aviation fuel, and all those fuel fascilities can be made to go away in the first week or two of a conflict. So much for Argentina’s air superiority then.
With the use of RAF L-1011 and VC10 refueling aircraft, RAF Typhoon fighters based from Ascension island could conceivably strike targets in and around Beunos Aires. With the retirement of RAF bombers, any Argentine forces in the Falklands no longer need fear aerial bombardment until the Royal Navy brings one of their two light aircraft carriers into range.
The British have the means to sink the entire Argentinian navy if they’re foolish enough to leave port, and to destroy critical Argentinian targets using TLAMs and Typhoon bombing runs. Argentina has no military means to sink the whole Royal Navy, or target London, or South Hampton, etc.
The British have the means to control the marine battle space, the Argentinians do not. The British can attack Argentinian centers of gravity. I don’t see how the Argentinians could possibly return the favor.
For the U.K. to lose, the politicians would have to surrender or hamstring their army, navy and airforce with idiotic ROE, not that I’d put that beyond the possible for the current resident of 10 Downing St.
