I didn’t say modify the constitution. Read it again: “wants to revise the interpretation of the constitution “. Not the same thing, & it’s been done several times already, with smaller majorities than Abe now has

Even a reinterpreting of such a critical component as Article 9 is a major development and probably won’t get through.

Tinkering around the edges to allow humanitarian deployments is a whole different kettle of fish to allowing preemptive strikes against potential hostile threats.

Running aground some merchant ships is even more riskier and requires even more skill than a normal amphibious landing. Landing craft are built for shallow draftoperations whereas an Atlantic Ocean capable merchant ship has a very deep draft hence they run aground before they get to the coast.

Being stranded several hundred metres from shore is risky, especially if the weather turns to crap (and that’s possible with Falklands). But guess Argenitinians can control weather and have xray ESP that allows them to know exactly where the best landing grounds are.

Do JF-17s have the ability to lock onto a ship 180-300 nm away(supposed range of C802 and C803).

Oh and what are the Eurofighters doing?

Remember until your Argentinian super men storm Mount Pleasant and overwhelm the British contingent, the Argies don’t have air superiority and a JF-17 has nothing on a Eurofighter especially if it’s load out is AShMs.

If I assume British are comatose mentally handicapped nitwits and Argentinians are super men (maybe result of some sort of post WWII Nazi breeding program), then your plan is plausible. :eagerness:

Watch while RN float beyond strike range ?

Why would RN be outside of strike range?

Since when are power plants classified as military targets ?
sounds like you are suggesting terror bombing.

Powerplants are strategic targets and the US and Co bombed them both in 1991 and 1999 as well as water processing infrastructure.

I think you meant to say the floating targets are right between two hostile air bases loaded with anti ship missiles,
with no air cover at that.
Or did UK already have operational F-35B & AEW ?

Errmm Argentina doesn’t have modern operational stand off capability.

The truth is that ships are floating target practice against stand-off attacks if they have no air cover.

Stand-off attacks from what? Super Etendards with Exocet? Or some JF-17s. AWDs are designed to ping planes out of the sky. And Argies aren’t going to be operating anything with truely long range missiles.

At that time at night, anchored at the pier.

Huh?

The ships and submarines don’t just deploy during the day. Submarines actually seldom dock when on patrol – it kind of limits their usefulness.

Can the transponder be switched off, or malfunction

Sure, except you have to report why it’s off.

Also 2-3 ships going off line sounds suspicious especially if they’re heading towards Falklands.

But then you’re assuming the Brits are useless idiots who don’t post sentries, dock their submarine over night and don’t bother with any rudimentary intelligence of potential enemies with a stated axe to grind.

Yes, or at least the guy in the light tower, if any, perhaps.
Whether he draw the conclusion that an invasion is imminent is open for debate,
as was the case at pearl harbor

Pearl Harbour is bad example – they assumed the aircraft were theirs and there are conspiracy theories the Americans let them through.

In an case Pacific was huge, warships are faster than merchant ships, 1941 vintage radars/surveillance was not so great at detecting anything.

Effective range 8,140 m (8,900 yd) with standard projectile
12,850 m (14,050 yd) with rocket projectile

Erm that’s a mortar, not a grenade launcher.

Tell me more about the operational F-35B inventory in UK, this is both news and highly interesting.

Tell me more about:

– Argentine stand off Anti-Ship capability
– Argentine covert ops
– Argentine military readiness
– Argentine amphibious capability
– How much more clever Argies are than Brits.

Oh and also with regards to running aground ships – Falklands aren’t nice pretty beaches. They’re quite treacherous:

Performing an amphibious landing requires good planning and reconaissance. You need to have good knowledge about tides, coastal obstacles, and even such mundane things as soil/earth composition of landing beach.

Americans got stung at Tarawa in WWII when they failed to take into account tides and sandbars.

Overlord involved extensive reconaissance including landing geologists onto the landing grounds at night to collect soil samples.

And using old maps doesn’t help because soil erosion changes things routinely.

So you could run your merchant ships aground hundreds of metres away from land which would be risky and could result in extremely heavy casualties.

It’s not so much the people but the Governments that run the Country. Hitler was the worst in the history of the world. Yet, as a whole the Germans are Good and Descent People. The same could be said about Japan and many other countries.

People don’t think that way. They make their enemy the people – Croats talk about the Serbs as their enemy in 1991-95 not the Serbian government or the Serbian breakaway province government.

Australians still talk about the “Japs” as their enemies in WWII and mention how barbaric they were.

They don’t say “Tojo’s government was barbaric.”

Because in the end whilst Hitler and Tojo and Stalin are evil, they do not physically commit the atrocities themselves. Normal people do that and very often of their own accord either for personal gain, for pleasure or to be seen to be committed to the system.

As for Japanese election results, Abe did not win upper house majority (115 out of 242 seats):

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/JAP-01-290713.html

Oh and Abe’s changes don’t bode well for Asian alliances as they include such things as rights to pre-emptive strikes, allowing more censorship, removal of recognition of universality of human rights, limiting freedom of speech, giving more power to Prime Minister instead of Diet (parliament) and making it easier for further such changes to constitutions.

http://japandailypress.com/japan-might-seek-provision-to-allow-pre-emptive-strikes-2532876/

http://japanfocus.org/-Lawrence-Repeta/3969

South Koreans etc won’t like this – it reeks of progress back towards Japanese militarism (especially preemptive strikes and renounciation of universality of human rights). In fact in the preemptive strike article it already mentions South Korean apprehension at Japanese constitutional change.

And it doesn’t help Abe has in the past rejected Murayama Statement which is a formal apology for actions in WWII.

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/07/26/japanese-anime-legend-miyazaki-denounces-push-to-change-the-peace-constitution/

I don’t see how Argentina can pull off a surprise at all.

1. Their political establishment constantly rants on about Falklands. Of course this makes the Brits pay attention to what they’re doing.

2. Their military has extremely poor readiness and their Navy and Air Force have near zero readiness. Any improvements to readiness especially for amphibious/paradrop/insertions will mean the British ears perk up.

3. Also infiltrating a batallion and even successfully besieging Mt Pleasant won’t help. It’ll be like 1982 where they hold the island but have no naval or air support (remember the navy and air force are largely non-operable and even more lacking in capability than they were in 1982.

So who’ going to stop British naval flotilla when it arrives?

The Argies would also struggle reinforcing the island, especially with a RN attack submarine and destroyer/frigate out on the prowl.

4. Also infiltrating an island in the middle of the Atlantic is not an easy thing to accomplish, especially with a batallion of men. Taking out what is essentially a fortress is even harder, especially without air or artillery support or without ability to airdrop into it.

The whole scenario is too Tom Clancy.

Turkey does licence produce F-16 but I don’t think it’s a 100% local content. Can anyone comment on local content percentage?

Also does Turkey produce any of the avionics?

No idea what’s settled on TF-X. It’s touted as 5th generation so one assumes stealth fighter. JAS-39E/F is not a fifth generation fighter.

To be honest, I think loading up on F-35A would be the way to go

Also OTS purchases of Airbus aircraft (e.g. C-295, humming along steadily), & other OTS purchases in general. Some upgrade programmes also run fairly smoothly, e.g. the Airbus upgrade of Spanish & Brazilian P-3s: not flawless, but not bad. IIRC the upgrade of USCG (sort of military) C-130s with Seaspray 7500E radars also went pretty well.

C-130J & C-17 development did not go well at all. Late, over budget, technical problems . . . . recent OTS buyers benefit from coming in after that’s all been sorted out. It’ll be the same for A400M soon.

I was referring to Indian procurement only.

Apparently the Indian AFs is also happy with PC-7 OTS procurement and is playing hardball to keep HAL out of the loop with their HTT40.

I think most countries should buy OTS. I’m not a big fan of subsidised defence industries whose main purpose seems to be pretending to have indigenous capability – Australia has been burned so many times with this and it has cost the tax payer billions e.g. from memory it took 3 times the manpower hours to licence assemble S-70 Blackhawks in Australia than have it done in America and ship them here. That’s a lot of tax payer dollars flushed down the drain. Then there were issues with Collins class subs, SH-2 Seasprites etc.

Hence my reference to founding fathers of economics: Ricardo and Smith – they emphasised countries focusing on competitive advantage and not the innefficient “we do everything” method so beloved by nationalists and communists alike.