"Argentina has launched a naval campaign to isolate the Falkland Islands that has seen it detain Spanish fishing vessels on suspicion of breaking the country’s “blockade” of the seas around the British territories."
Given we have binned our aircraft carriers and our Harriers, in one of Mr Cameron's less inspired moves, and just given Mr Sarkozy's blood pressure a shoeing, we'd be in a right pickle if the Miss Havisham-lookalike who runs Argentina decided to send a few thousand more conscripts to get killed. Once the airfields were occupied we'd be in trubs.
I'd resurrect the Harriers, and there was at least one small carrier still left in Portsmouth this summer. A 5% cut in public sector salaries over £50K should raise some cash - oh, and a performance-related tax on executive pay over, say, £1m or £2m pa.
There seems to be a fair bit of oil down there which is legally ours, and which others would doubtless like to get their mitts on. How exactly does Cameron think he's going to protect it? He seems to find the money and the kit when the oil ISN'T ours.
UPDATE - fair play to those Galician skippers. The Falklands is a long trip. I suppose they've emptied UK waters of everything more than an inch long, and are now looking to do the same to the South Atlantic.
3 comments:
"Once the airfields were occupied we'd be in trubs."
Or otherwise put out of action, game over
Apparently we have got 5 squadrons of Typhoons and a flight based on the Falklands, 4 aircraft - maybe some more should be sent
The Argentine air force doesn't look very impressive
40 or so Mirage/Skyhawks
It should be feasible to hold the Islands, but not to re-take
We have much more pressing problems of course
We need a type 45 perminantly deployed down there to warn them off.
The Fleet Air Arm's Sea Harrier FA2s were retired early in 2005 with no replacement in the air superiority (fighter) role until the introduction of the F-35 with the White Elephant Class 60,000 tonne cocktail carriers, HMS Unaffordable and HMS Impractical. Joint Force Harrier had the second generation Harrier GR9 ground attack/reconnaissance version. The Navy didn't want to spend £600 million to transfer the Shar FA2's excellent Blue Parrot radar into the Harrier because it wanted to spend everything on its vanity fleet of Daring class frigates, Astute subs and the hopeless carriers. How ironic that a 60k tonne ship (the other one tied up) will go to sea with six F-35s - the same number of aircraft that the 19k tonne Invincible class carriers carried when used in the anti-sub role. Finally, the Pegasus engine at the heart of the Harrier had reached its max thrust development thereby limiting the use of increasingly heavy aircraft.
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