Falkland Islanders to hold referendum over sovereignty

[Sava]

That's because the mother****ers already lived there. And the IED components they found and used were all over those ****hole countries, and much smaller than an Exocet.

BTW, the ground launch variant of the Exocet requires a launcher that is pretty specialized and huge compared to the missile itself. That launcher is larger then a small truck - it's larger than a mid-size truck, weighs a bunch, and is not something you can quickly field assemble.

The ground launch and air launch variants are totally different. For ground launch, you don't start with the forward velocity of the aircraft, nor can you accommodate the drop after separation that is designed into air launch missiles to protect the aircraft.

If you did try to launch from a truck, you'd blow your ass to smithereens and pieces of the missile might make it 100 yards or so. They're not like Estes rockets.

I'm certainly not an expert in such things. However, I wouldn't want to dismiss the possibility that human ingenuity could come up with a workable solution.

All of the components of the missile, including fire control cabinet and consoles, could fit in a two car garage. Obviously the launcher would need to be some distance from the control systems. But it isn't totally inconceivable that competent team of engineers could rig something up like that. Mythbusters does more complicated ****.

By no means am I making a case for the likeliest scenarios.

[MichaeltheGreat]

These are actually fairly slick. They have reworked airframes, engines, early F16 avionics - really not bad for a third world air force that likes to do flyovers on football games and the occasional air show. They were reworked later variant A4s - something like the A4M.

What's truly ancient are their fighters - Mirage IIIs? That's only slightly more advanced than a SPAD 13, with none of the coolness factor.

[Dinner]

Skyhawks are frigging ancient. The originally flew in 1954 yet Argentina is still keeping them around? Come on, they're like three generations of fighters behind.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Only 8 are fighters. They bought/built 36 uprated A4AR, but that was over a decade ago, so there undoubtedly have been a few unreplaced operational losses. Then they have a handful of older attack aircraft. The A4AR are more advanced than their garbage fighters, but they're mud movers aka ground attack. They can carry a pair of AIM-9M on the outer hardpoints, but that means they give up 2 of 5 hardpoints to a limited self-defense capability. The A4 also has major blindspots that make it a joke if you try to use it in a fighter role.

I'm sure the RAF didn't just pull the number 4 out of their ass when they decided how many fighters to base in the Falklands. They've looked at the numbers and demonstrated capability, since it's a single-axis threat environment that's slow to reinforce. All those air force types with their powerpoints probably have some use.

[Dinner]

Given the UK was the one effectively enforcing the Monroe Doctrine for much of its early life, that's a rather amusing statement.

Not to mention the Monroe Doctrine specifically said NEW European colonies. Existing colonies were exempted.

[regexcellent]

I thought the Argies had more like 25-50 combat aircraft. Yeah if they only have 8 then it's a no-go.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I doubt that they would be able to detect company and smaller sized elements. It's not like the British are constantly watching every square inch of the Falklands by satellite. They have to actually look at the photographs produced over the Falkies to see anything there, and not all reconnaissance satellites have real-time capability anyway I believe. Plus, do the British even have a space program? They can't have a whole ton of spy satellites like we do; I imagine they piggyback quite a bit on our own network.

They don't need a lot of satellite capability, and that wouldn't be used over the Falklands. It would be used over Argentina, to detect patterns of activity that indicate preparations for deployment. Argentina doesn't do large scale movements or operations, so the activity pattern would be obvious even at battalion level. Not to mention all the juicy SIGINT. You can bet with the current political noise, the Brits sniff around a bit, just to make sure everything stays tidy and in its place. Company size movements are fantastically easy to spot with modern sensor networks, you really don't need much. I'm sure there's a recon drone or two lying arount that the Brits forgot to mention. It wouldn't be flying all the time, but if a ground or sea based sensor picked up anything unusual, that puppy would be airborne in a heartbeat to sniff around. The UK has a modern, highly capable force, and a full understanding of modern battlespace management. They're not going to let themselves be surprised and embarassed by a bunch of WOGs or fuzzy wuzzies. Sorry to my Agentinean friends, but from a modern warfare perspective, the pejoratives fit.

Though air supremacy wouldn't be hard to achieve since the British have like, four jets there. Even for the Argentinians, if they threw their whole air force at the Falklands they could have air supremacy in hours.

They have 8, ocho, yep, two short of double digits, fighters. Everything else is a transport, trainer or mud mover. Mirage IIIs LMFAO. Assuming all 8 fly, and didn't break down, the four RAF fighters there could handle the whole combat capable portion of the Argie AF. Here's why: (skool now in sesshun )

Let's give the Argies credit that they know how to fly their aircraft. That doesn't mean they've actually flown training missions with full live ordnance loads, especially with their budget constraints. If they have at all, you can guarantee it's not all pilots, and not many times. Doing that on a range exercise is a lot different from doing it in an active threat environment in combat. You can bet the Brit fighter pilots stationed there have much more total flying time, much more ACM and realistic training, and they have a much easier mission profile.

For the Argies to be successful, they first have to make one fundamental decision: How much of the airfield do they kill? If you destroy the control tower, fuel storage, and runway, you can't use the airfield yourself. If you don't, then you have to concede the possibility of loss of the airfield. The UK has a global midair refueling capability. They also have more than 8 fighters.

Once the Argies choose which plan they'll fail to execute, they have to try. Poorly trained pilots, just like poorly trained any other MOS, do one thing immediately in their first combat situation - they lose all sense of functioning as a unit and break down to a bunch of individuals.

Then the second big question comes up - do they try to sortie all mud movers and fighter cover in one route , or do they try to approach from different directions? If they split the attack into, say, four groups, then you have 2 fighters and 10 mud movers in four different sets - or some variant. The point is you let the Brits go 2 on 2 with Eurofighter Typhoons against Mirage IIIs? LMFAO. The Brits just decide to destroy half the Argie airforce from the air, and let ground based air defenses handle the other two.

Two factors apply here: First, a mission kill on a mud mover takes nothing more than making it dump its ordnance, or otherwise maneuver off the target and miss. Second, the Argies won't know the siting of most of the ground based air defenses. They have to wait until they're lit up like Havana cigars to find it. So in this scenario, most of half the Argie air force gets killed outright, the other half has limited losses and damage, but a lot of mission kill, so they do only minor damage. The Brits land and refuel and rearm. Oooopsies.

So now let's try a single attack by the whole Argie air force. The mud movers will be slow and maneuverable as pregnant ducks. The Brit fighters outperform the Argie fighters so much it isn't even funny. The Argie fighters can't separate much from the mud movers, because the Brit fighters will then be able to rip the mud movers apart. So they're constrained by escort duties. The mud movers have a nominal self-defense capability, but it's tits on a bull. They can't maneuver to try and engage other fighters without dumping their ordnance, which equals primary mission kill. So the real numbers are 8 on 4, with the 4 having vastly superior aircraft and pilots. The 8 are tied to escort duty, and Brits can use their all around superiority by splitting into sections of 2, and forcing the Argies to either leave a bunch of their mud movers vulnerable, or also split. The smaller the granularity, the more experience and training in operating as a unit pays off.

It's never going to happen, but I'd absolutely put my money on the RAF. It's a much easier mission when all you have to do is deny your enemy total success, and you get to pick the ground (or air).

Wikipedia says the Argentinians have a brigade of paratroopers. That's more than enough if they are actually capable of large operations.

That was in 2009, I took a quick look. They didn't train for **** back then either. The Canadian Airborne Brigade managed to barbecue a skinny, that's probably more than the Argie AB could do. Not sure if it was their airforce or if they used airborne to push tied up civilians out of helos in the Rio Plata estuary and off the coast, but that's the upper limit of their capability.

I'm also a Pathfinder, so I know that side of the details of running a large scale air drop.

Assuming they have airborne still (maybe for parades), their knowledge of large scale airborne ops is on a par with the US and UK around the time of the invasion of Sicily. Their training isn't that advanced. The pilots are far worse - they have no institutional experience with airborne drops in a hot environment, so no way to even train for it. Light them up with tracers, IR or radar, the warning receivers go off, and you can bet those boys **** themselves and get task saturated. The Falklands isn't a bunch of flat terrain, so you either jump from way too high and let your sticks become clay pigeons at worst or hopelessly intermixed and dispersed out of their DZs at best, or you fly normal airborne drop profiles, and after the pilots get lit up and lose all discipline, they go off course and start the drops with too little altitude and kill half the sticks, or else they try to adjust and overshoot the DZ. Leading back to the intermixing and dispersal issue and inability to collectively un**** themselves once on the ground. Not pretty in any event.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

I will concede the second point readily because you were actually an airborne ranger and I'm just a cadet playing armchair general. Though air supremacy wouldn't be hard to achieve since the British have like, four jets there. Even for the Argentinians, if they threw their whole air force at the Falklands they could have air supremacy in hours.

Last time they tried that was in 1982.

Argentinian aircraft shot down by British aircraft- 21

British aircraft shot down by Argentinian aircraft- 0

[Aeson]

I just watched "Battleship" (which may be the greatest movie ever made) and it has convinced me that it's not military might or technological superiority that wins wars, but rather gaping plot holes and the human spirit. I'm pretty sure the Argentinians have at least one of those on their side ...

[regexcellent]

Satellites and sensor systems are wonderful things.

I doubt that they would be able to detect company and smaller sized elements. It's not like the British are constantly watching every square inch of the Falklands by satellite. They have to actually look at the photographs produced over the Falkies to see anything there, and not all reconnaissance satellites have real-time capability anyway I believe. Plus, do the British even have a space program? They can't have a whole ton of spy satellites like we do; I imagine they piggyback quite a bit on our own network.

Uh, dood? You need air supremacy, not superiority, supremacy, to perform forced entry on an airfield. You also need total suppression of air defenses. That's the first key to getting a mustard stain instead of becoming a grease stain miles short of your DZ.

Assuming the Argies still have airborne, they don't do **** for training, and there's no way (forget air defenses, let 'em come in unopposed) they'd do a large drop and be able to un**** themselves under fire, so direct forced entry is out. If you have remote DZs and follow a rally and move to contact plan, you concede all surprise and get the living **** cut out of you by a prepared enemy. You also need FACs, Pathfinders and such to coordinate ingress, drop operations and assembly and AC egress route control. Large airborne ops are enormously complex with a lot of moving pieces. Even if the Argies still have a nominal airborne force, they don't have the capability to do more than parade ground small unit drops.

I will concede the second point readily because you were actually an airborne ranger and I'm just a cadet playing armchair general. Though air supremacy wouldn't be hard to achieve since the British have like, four jets there. Even for the Argentinians, if they threw their whole air force at the Falklands they could have air supremacy in hours.

Wikipedia says the Argentinians have a brigade of paratroopers. That's more than enough if they are actually capable of large operations.

[regexcellent]

The F-22 is more maneuverable than the Eurofighter, it has better thrust than the Eurofighter, it has a higher ceiling, it has a MUCH, MUCH better radar (as in an actually modern one), it is inordinately stealthier from all aspects (the Eurofighter has some mediocre low-observable properties from the frontal aspect), and it has a better array of weapons it can carry.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The fact that it's barren would make it a lot easier for it to go unnoticed. There's nobody around to see them.

Satellites and sensor systems are wonderful things.

For the Argentinians to effectively attack the Falklands, I think they'd probably need a couple battalions or maybe a regiment of paratroopers who would take the airport, and then reinforce by airlift. The British don't have enough jets on the island to effectively resist the entire Argentinian air force, small as it may be.

Uh, dood? You need air supremacy, not superiority, supremacy, to perform forced entry on an airfield. You also need total suppression of air defenses. That's the first key to getting a mustard stain instead of becoming a grease stain miles short of your DZ.

Assuming the Argies still have airborne, they don't do **** for training, and there's no way (forget air defenses, let 'em come in unopposed) they'd do a large drop and be able to un**** themselves under fire, so direct forced entry is out. If you have remote DZs and follow a rally and move to contact plan, you concede all surprise and get the living **** cut out of you by a prepared enemy. You also need FACs, Pathfinders and such to coordinate ingress, drop operations and assembly and AC egress route control. Large airborne ops are enormously complex with a lot of moving pieces. Even if the Argies still have a nominal airborne force, they don't have the capability to do more than parade ground small unit drops.

[Hauldren Collider]

What it doesn't say is how many F-22's got Eurofighter kill marks...

[kentonio]

Subsequent to the 2012 Alaska Red Flag exercises, two Luftwaffe Eurofighter Typhoons from Jagdgeschwader 74 (JG74) were seen with F-22 Raptor "kill" markings. Eurofighter Typhoon 30+29 had one F-22 "kill" mark whereas aircraft 30+30 was photographed with three F-22 "kill" marks.

[Hauldren Collider]

The Eurofighter is better than the F-15 and the F-16, no question, but the F-22 can kill it beyond visual range.