Chavez must have been smoking something illegal...

[Adrian Laguna]

Why does anyone pay attention to the rhetoric of people like this? That's all it is: hot air. Chavez is a real-life version of an Internet forum attention whore.

It is hot air, but it's not for the purpose of attention whoring. This is part of his strategy to stay in power. The masses love the anti-imperialist rhetoric. He probably doesn't give a fuck what the US or Europe think of him.

[Sea Skimmer]

The who and the what now?

Venezuela's brand-spanking new Su-30MKVs do give it's air force the most powerful and advanced fighters in South America, however. Still, they'd need more than Su-30MKVs armed with Kh-31s to deal with the Royal Navy.

Pretty much any stand off missile will do the job as long as a decent number are available to fire, the RN is still a fleet of minimal armed warships and Sea Wolf has an effective range of only about 5,500 yards. I recently learned that when the Falklands war ended Argentina was actually in the process of qualifying its IA 58 Pucará turboprops to carry torpedoes for surface attack, and I’m convinced that had this been done before the shooting started, the Royal Navy would have been defeated. Alternatively, five more Exocet missiles OR properly set bomb fuses would also have probably been enough to do the job.

The British kicked ass in the land fighting, but the naval/air war was a far closer run thing then it ever should have been. Almost the entire British invasion force was transported on a single passenger liner which was not extensively fitted with decoys or jammers, let alone actual self defense weapons. The British could have lost several THOUSAND men had it been hit.

God help the British of the argies had gotten a couple extra KC-130s, allowing them to launch mass attacks. But then in the end, a hoard of WW2 planes would have worked too.

[Adrian Laguna]

Wait, Sea Skimmer, let me see if I get this straight. Had the Argentinians put any real thought into planning the war, they could have won? Man that makes for some sad, sad alternate history. Third-world country defeats Royal Navy, British take thousands of casualties.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Wait, Sea Skimmer, let me see if I get this straight. Had the Argentinians put any real thought into planning the war, they could have won? Man that makes for some sad, sad alternate history. Third-world country defeats Royal Navy, British take thousands of casualties.

Well, the Falklands was a litany of many peacetime cutback stupidities. The Royal Navy suffered from severe cutbacks. They didn't have much by way of strike aircraft either.

[Sea Skimmer]

Wait, Sea Skimmer, let me see if I get this straight. Had the Argentinians put any real thought into planning the war, they could have won?

Yeah, and as it was they might have won even with the historical level of preparation. To give an idea of how important the fusing issue alone was, 13 dud bombs struck RN warships. If half of those had exploded, that already would have been enough to cripple the RN force, in the words of one of their own admirals!

Before the war began Argentina had excellent relations with the US and France and could buy almost anything it wanted from either nation. M60 tanks, an old Essex, naval mines, you name it and they could have gotten it on credit. Argentina already had a well trained navy and air force, and of the ground troops the Marine Corps were also quite effective. It was only the mass conscript army that pretty much failed in combat, luckily for the British only one battalion of Marines was deployed to the Falklands. Most of the Argie Marines were assigned to guard mainland air bases against SAS/SBS raids, a wise precaution.

A key issue though, is that the entire invasion was planned and executed in a matter of weeks, specifically in response to an internal political crisis facing Argentina’s military dictatorship. It was not and could not be planned far in advance.

Man that makes for some sad, sad alternate history. Third-world country defeats Royal Navy, British take thousands of casualties.

The Royal Navy had been forced for decades previously to buy warships of minimal size and armament to save money, and having been forced to choose between capabilities, the RN had favored warships optimized for ASW. This made sense since in the wide open Atlantic Soviet subs where the main threat. Long range Soviet bombers would have been unable to launch sustained attacks, and could be countered by land based fighters and USN carrier groups.

As it was only two RN ships in the entire deployed force had modern SAMs able to counter low level air attack, and the Sea Wolf missile they carried was not capable of defending other ships in a formation owning to its extremely limited range. No RN ship had a rapid fire gun system like Phalanx or Goalkeeper as a last ditch defense.

Most vessels pretty much had only a one or two barrel 4.5in gun mount, plus a single missile launcher, typically the obsolete Sea Cat, to defend against air attack. They might also have had a couple single barrel 20mm guns, but that kind of weapon wasn’t very effective even in WW2.

In many respects RN and USN warships from WW2 bristling with automatic AA guns would have been better defended against the Argentinean iron bombing and unguided rocket and strafing attacks. Such attacks sank four of the six British vessels lost, air launched Exocet missiles* claimed the other two. An additional shore launched Exocet from an improvised launcher (it was meant for ship launch and was airlifted onto the Falklands) damaged another RN ship, but the unguided weapons attacks in turn damaged 14 more vessels. I should note that some of the damage was very minor, 30mm shell holes, but several warships had to withdraw after taking dud bombs.

*Argentina had just five air launched Exocet, one each for the five Super Etendard attack planes which had been delivered on the outbreak of war. All five were expended, and the far more extensive use of the missile in the Iran-Iraq war suggests that a 50% hit rate can be expected against poorly or undefended targets. Argentina had 14 of the aircraft on order in total, along with 50 Exocets, thankfully for the RN France firmly sided with the British and embargoed the weapons. The Argies had to go to great efforts to get the missiles which had been delivered operational, but they managed the job with time to spare.

And yeah well, I know too damn much about this war, but it really does go to show the real risk of running down defense spending and assuming that absurd contingences can’t and won’t pop up.

[CJvR]

I suspect much of the Argentinian faliure in the war was due to both the idea that they wouldn't have to fight to keep the islands and the hasty nature of the invasion. Had the Argies invaded with the firm belief that they would have had to fight to keep their ill gotten gains they would have had a much better plan and been much better prepared. The UK response might have been hasty and improvised but so was the Argentinian defence.