What is often forgotten when x,y or z newspaper or armchair general states that Argentina is at the cusp of taking the Falklands is the parlous state of their armed forces!

The Argentine armed forces are smaller and in many respect worse equipped then during the 82 conflict, they have also been starved of funds.

They don’t have the sealift capability or the escorts to protect it if they did to put the number of troops required into a beach head. The long retired FGR2Phantom is superior in capability to any jets the Argentine’s operate now. They can’t even sortie enough aircraft to overwhelm the Typhoon’s based at MPA.

All they can do is rattle sabres and play petty games trying to hinder the economy of the Islands. The recent issue with fishing being a good example, fishing vessels use Uraguay to lay up and make repairs. All the Falklands will do is improve the harbour facilities on the Islands, maybe procure a floating dry dock as well and problem solved.

Well I could talk about population density but lets just say no party in the area wants to find out the result of a war.

All that is limited in range and just the smaller part of that is capable to inflict local damage by that. Even a local success of their ground forces by tactical surprise and/or numbers will not tip the balance of power in their favor. Without military aid by the Chinese there is no realistic chance to start a war with limited targets even. Smart weapons do no longer allow to utilise the terrain like in the 50s. The Chinese can not see some gains from a local conflict there except a power change within NK after a lost border battle. 😉

Well hmmm, quite alot of that artillery has good range capability and they have plenty of it. As was shown in the Korean war artillery is king there! Also their SRBM’s and IRBM’s can hit quite a few cities in the region. I agree that the southern forces would win out in the end but all analysis shows that it would be an utter slaughter before that point.

Also agree that China does not want to see a local conflict and arguably they are the important power broker in the area.

A significant proportion of their fleet is in service on paper only! In respect of fast air I would say some of their later build J-7 are probably still being flown and the most potent aircraft in their fleet the Mig-23 and Mig-29 are still active albeit availbility and flight hours are very low.

Russia is no longer going to supply aircraft and China wants hard currency for anything new.

The fact is asymetric systems like missiles and mini submarines are a better investment at the moment.

Well lets see what other guys say. Both the antiviruses at my home and office didn’t detect a damn thing.

Symantec is known for its false detections btw.

Your funeral!

Only helping fellow forum members avoid a virus.

EMALS no AAG yes I think.

As for older conversation about hydraulic chocks to hold back F35b on QE class…mute point since SSDR.

Interesting statement in the video:

30/10/13 Ship structurally complete.

That says to me that at that point further detailed fitting out will halt and she will be towed out of dock tied up alongside in Rosyth then mothballed at that point allowing 2015 SSDSR decisions to be made.

In effect she isn’t used for any work up for PoW and is kept in a state that requires the least work to drag her back into the Rosyth dry dock for conversion to CATOBAR or final fit out as mega helicopter assault ship. Considering PoW won’t be finished until around 2018 ready to take the crew from the retiring HMS Ocean plus crewman trained in America and France on CATOBAR operations it kind of has a logic to it.

Why put any miles on QE when PoW is going to be the prime carrier I suppose.

They managed to take the back seat because someone agreed to do the dirty work (thank you mister sarkozy).

BTW bluewings, I don’t remember which DSI issue that was, but there was an interview of a high ranking french general who said that interoperability was utterly expensive, and could even become a trouble to the french armies in the future because it would make them unable to fund other very necessary stuff to keep an army that could work all by itself.

WRT NATO, as an organisation is probably the biggest terrorist group there is, with much much more terrorist acts than any other group (gladio anyone?). It’s a crying shame that we got back into this organisation.

Nic

Well you are more then welcome to your opinion about NATO Nic, but in what way is it a terrorist group?
If you don’t like NATO take it somewhere else!