A very interesting debate and a thought provoking article. The UK is currently in a very tight position with two major deployments and would be very hard pushed to run a third even on a small scale without borrowing equipment from other nations. If say Argentina was to buy a couple of squadrons of modern Russian fighters at short notice and base them in the south, this could be a scenario that the UK would not like at all and would have no choice but to respond.
Things are very different now though compared to in the past and satellite reconnaissance is now much better than in 1982 and you can be sure that regular overflights looking at what is happening militarily in Argentina is currently being done, unlike back then. The presence of cruise missiles in the UK portfolio is quite a major deterent, although I guess we actually don’t own enough for a campaign of more than a couple of weeks at best. The retirement of the Sea Harriers sent out the wrong signal to Argentina in my view and the laying up of the Invincible and the sale of type 23’s to Chile can’t have helped either.
Maybe positioning a few Typhoons in that part of the world would be a prudent thing to do and perhaps run an exercise to see if the E-3’s and Nimrods can provide 24 hour cover that far from Ascension, which I very much doubt.
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