Are there any airworthy Victors about as a couple of them were needed for Black Buck?

I’m getting all excited at the prospect of seeing them all en route to Argentina… sorry, occupied Falklands! :diablo:

I’d rather see them try and accelerate Taranis or put the prototype into emergency service and have that go. War is the greatest innovator there is, it might push the program on a bit.

The Spanish Air Force has amounted 10000 flight hours and has received 28 aircraft so far.
http://www.eurofighter.com/news/1000SpanishFlyingHours.asp

The Luftwaffe has formally taken delivery of 49 aircraft up to date. No idea about the RAF and AMI or RSAF for that matter.

Read somewhere the other day that the RSAF have had 8 delivered so far.

Still hanging on to empire I see. Is war really worth fighting over for an oil company?

Actually, Britain gave independence to every colony that asked for it over the past 40 years. So to call the Falklands or Gibraltar or any other British Territories an empire is simply wrong, in the same way that saying Wales or Cornwall are part of the British empire. The only difference is that there are people in Wales and Cornwall who don’t want to be part of the UK, unlike the Falklands.

To say we would only fight for the Falklands for the oil is plain wrong as well, it’s another incentive on top of all the reasons why we’ve defended it up to when the oil was discovered.

Not been one of them there for a long time.:)

British papers (I know not massively reliable) have been saying a VC10 is down there instead.

I could respond to every item point by point, but i won’t bore you with details (plus i’ve already been warned about one-liners :dev2:)

regardless, you all see ‘impossibilities’, i see ‘interesting challenges’

the key problem for the falklands is that you can put more SOLDIERS on one ship than there are PEOPLE on all the islands combined

if the ship even starts to unload and establishes a ‘beachhead’, who is going to stop them? As you mentioned, the total population of the city is only a couple thousand.

Against 5,000 heavily armed soldiers?

How about 1000 British troops, plus the entire Falkland Islands defence force, plus the Typhoons, plus Clyde, plus the Frigate on patrol if it is nearby.

You have been cut down by at least 4 different people all pointing out different aspects of your wholly stupid plan. Even the Argentinian govt. has admitted it CANT retake the islands, and I would expect they know a little more about their own defence capability and that of the Falklands than one internet forumer with a half baked, back of the cigarette packet idea.

How many bombs do you think it would take to actually take out one container ship (you specified that, and they DONT carry 5000 people, you’d need a cruise ship or liner for that) and some people unloading on a harbour.

And as other have pointed out, it wouldn’t get to land in Stanley without people realising. And the Typhoons wouldn’t take hours to respond like unloading 5000 men would (this is a cargo ship after all, not an amphibious assault ship, which by the way, the British have a massively improved force of compared to 1982), these are aircraft stationed on what is essentially permanent QRA. 1 satellite phone call as soon as they know what’s happening and London will know as well, unlike last time when it took weeks.

In the couple of weeks it’d take to get a task force down there, how strongly could this magical Argentinian force make the whole island (about half the size of Texas)? That’s how long you’d have before several thousand angry Royal Marines, Paras and Special Forces turned up with ships and a carrier with more aircraft board and more advanced aircraft than the entire Argentine airforce has flyable.

You guys need to think more creatively.

Britain’s strongest asset is their air superiority

Argentina’s strongest asset is their greater number of troops (locally)

Never take on your enemy’s strongest point directly.

How could Argentina neutralize Britain’s air advantage?

Well, by not fighting in the air for one.

Secretly load a cargo ship with troops and weapons, land and take the airfield by ‘surprise’. Once you have neutralized the airfield, ship over thousands of more troops and artillery before Britain has a chance to respond.

Turn the island into a fortress, and Britain is unlikely to have the resources or stomach for an opposed landing.

Argentina’s great mistake last time was not putting enough forces with enough support on the islands.

No one would have ever though of that…

A cargo ship, that sneaks into the islands and lands without detection, then disembarks however many troops a container ship can carry, without the 1000 odd British troops realising and responding (it only takes 1 to notice and call it in and suddenly you have Typhoons dropping bombs on them), then taking the airfield. By the time they manage that i’d think the first SSN would be being retasked to come and show the Argentinians whats what.

Even if you’re plan worked, which btw it didn’t last time, and this time it’d be more heavily contested, but even if it worked and the UK somehow could not retake this fortress of an island, the supply lines would be easier to cut than before. 1 or 2 SSNs ends all shipping attempts, then they use Tomahawks to hit Argentine airstrips long enough for a carrier and airgroup to rock up and enforce an air blockade (which will be stronger than last time with F35’s).

@Quadbike: The Americans did help in some ways last time, but I think that Maggie wouldn’t have wanted to rely on a US task force to get British islands back, and I doubt we would now unless we had no other way of doing it. Last time Britain showed the world we still wouldn’t take anyone messing us about, if we had to use a CVBG we’d basically be saying the opposite.

If the amount of oil down there is anything close to the speculated 50 or 60 million barrels the Falklands Islanders would probably be willing to pay for what already exists and maybe a little more. I’m sure a decent case could be made for a couple of extra patrol vessels, SAR would definitely need to be improved with all the extra traffic (not necessarily defence I know)

Ahem, the figure thrown around is 60 BILLION barrels, which could make it one of the largest proven reserves in the world.

I’d think that to reasonably expand, a couple more patrol vessels (C3’s in a GP role or perhaps even a C2), a couple more helos for SAR and transport to the rigs, and maybe 1 or 2 maritime patrol aircraft. Since Nimrod is out of production and is thousands of miles away anyway, I don’t see too much harm in opting for another type for the Falklands.

If Argentina were to increase defence spending, i’d add a few more SAMs to the islands and increase the Typhoon flight a bit, so the islands could pay for a few more (dreaming I know). I’d also keep a dedicated refueller down there, either the current VC10, using whatever can be salvaged from the UK ones, or a new replacement.

To be honest, it isn’t that much of a stretch to imagine them paying for that.

I’m talking about something much smaller, not much bigger than an LCU, low cost force multiplication to make up for the massive cuts in fleet numbers

You want 128 VLS on something smaller? And able to keep up with a T45? Good luck with that.

It’d probably be easier and more useful to simply alter the current T45 design to include more VLS near the current cells and use space where the 2nd mast is for the AAW ships and the Harpoon area for another set of launchers. It might not get it up to 128 but it’s a start.

A UAE buy could mean any number of things. They are close allies of France with quite a few defence ties. It could be a similar situation to Brazil.