Readers will be aware of the shenanigans after the World Cup football match when England lost to Argentina. A group of Argentine footballers held up a banner claiming the Malvinas are Argentinian. It would seem that our Argentine friends are still rather keen to snaffle the Falkland Islands from us. They tried this in 1982 and were pushed out. But much has changed since then and it seems that politically, diplomatically and, above all, militarily those changes have been in the Argentinians’ favour.
Politically
With a globalist, rather than nationalist, Labour Party in government, we can’t be sure our Government would be so keen to defend British interests. Today’s Labour Party has consistently shown embarrassment over British history and views the British Empire and any British possessions as the epitome of evil. We saw this in Keir Starmer’s Chagos giveaway, a policy which, it seems, Mr Burnham’s Government is keen to push forward. We should therefore not be surprised if this Government is willing to surrender the Falklands, possibly by claiming they are only following ‘international law’.
And anyway, why would Britain want to keep the Falklands? Of course, there are possibly vast reserves of oil and gas in the waters around the islands. But due to our rulers making the achievement of Net Zero a legally binding policy, we wouldn’t want any of the Falklands’ oil and gas. So we might as well let Argentina have it all.
Diplomatically
When Thatcher was Prime Minister we had a strong relationship with the USA. But Starmer’s Labour seem to have done everything possible to annoy the economically successful Americans in order to have an excuse to drag us back into the failing, economically sclerotic EU. Our Government’s latest attempts to irritate the Americans include Labour trying to weaponise Ofcom, using online safety legislation, to impose massive fines on US tech companies, and our Government’s attempts to crush free speech by demanding that US tech companies use their algorithms to prioritise material from ‘trusted’ (Labour-supporting) news sources like the BBC and Channel 4 News and Sky News while deprioritising any material from real news sources that might be critical of our increasingly despotic Labour regime.
Moreover, Ed Miliband – our former Energy Secretary, now our Foreign Secretary – has previously clashed with Mr Trump over Net Zero and his attitudes to democracy, and in 2016 he described the President as “a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper”. Not the best way to make friends with the Americans who elected President Trump. So, in the event that Britain did try to assert sovereignty over the Falklands, we’d probably find that the USA sided with Argentina against us. When the Argentine players held up their banner, breaking FIFA rules on political demonstrations, the US administration defended their actions on the basis of free speech. As for Labour’s beloved EU, it seems keen to seize on any opportunity to punish and humiliate Britain for the Brexit vote. Moreover, being woke and anti-colonialist – and, of course, containing socialist, Argentina-friendly Spain – the EU would probably also support Argentina’s claim to the Falklands.
Militarily
It is above all militarily that Argentina seems to be in the ascendant over Britain. In 1982, the year of the last Argentine invasion, Argentina had about 100 jet fighters and 10 bombers. Now the Argentinians only have about six second-hand F-16s bought from Denmark, though another 12 are on order. Moreover, in 1982 Argentina had 10 Super Étendards made by French firm Dassault. The Argentines still have these, but they are all grounded due to a lack of spare parts – ironically supplied by Britain. The Argentinians also had an old Second World War aircraft carrier, six destroyers and two submarines. In addition, they had the battleship Belgrano, which the British transformed into a submarine with the loss of 323 Argentine lives. Now the Argentinians don’t have any carriers or submarines, and only have three destroyers and six corvettes.
So, just like the British military, the current Argentine military is a significantly shrivelled version of what it used to be. But while Britain continues to reduce its armed forces as the country becomes an impoverished, benefits-and-borrowing-dependent, bankrupt international laughing stock, the Argentinians are increasing their military forces.
Argentina is increasing its number of F-16s from six to 18. It is also buying two new refuelling aircraft, three submarines and three frigates.
It is perhaps the purchase of the two refuelling planes that gives the best indication of Argentina’s intentions. The Falklands are about 400 miles from the main Argentine military bases. Typically, an F-16’s operating range is 300 to 550 nautical miles (550 to 1,020 km) – the distance the jet can fly into a battle, complete its mission and return safely on one tank of fuel. It doesn’t take a military genius to guess why Argentina is buying two new refuelling planes. With them, Argentina’s F-16s will be able to spend much longer patrolling over the Falklands.
We can therefore expect Argentina’s 18 F-16s to overwhelm the four Typhoon jets the British have at their Falklands Mount Pleasant airbase, and the new Argentine frigates and submarines to quickly despatch the two small patrol vessels the British have supposedly ‘guarding’ the islands.
As for sending a taskforce to expel the Argentinians as Britain did in 1982, this would no longer be possible. Our two aircraft carriers are virtually useless due to persistent mechanical problems, there are reliability issues with the planes aboard them and all our submarines and most of our destroyers are in dock being repaired – again and again. Readers will no doubt remember the difficulties Britain had trying to send just one destroyer, HMS Dragon, to protect our military base on Cyprus when it was attacked. Given the lamentable state of our navy, one might be tempted to wonder what Britain’s 29 admirals – admirals, vice-admirals and rear-admirals – actually do all day. Britain would now be unable to assemble a taskforce to send to the Falklands and, without proper naval support, in the unlikely event that our two aircraft carriers could actually reach the islands, they would be sitting ducks for some Argentine anti-ship missile practice.
This is briefly why I believe that, once Argentina has its extra F-16s, its two refuelling aircraft and its new submarines and frigates, it will take the Falklands and be able to keep them. I wonder if the hundreds of bureaucrats at the ludicrously misnamed Ministry of Defence and our numerous military top brass have done similar research and have a plan to stop the loss of the Falklands?
David Craig is the author of There is No Climate Crisis, available (for now) as an e-book or paperback from Amazon.
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Much ado about nothing! I’m sure the Argies would not look forward to occupying an island where they would be hated.
So the Typhoons down both the tankers, and assorted F-16’s, and our eventually refurbished attack submarines sink the Argentine navy, maybe with a side order of cruise missiles on Buenos Aires government offices, presidential palace, etc. Could be doable.
The Falklands oil industry is not embryonic. Navitas and Rockhopper are actively developing Sea Lion with first oil q1 2028. The Falklands are self-governing in this respect. Other oil fields are being prospected. This might explain Argentina’s sudden return of interest. Navitas is an Israeli company who may not take kindly to any attempted expropriation.
Our reassertion of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands was one of the most notable events of Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister. Given the current PM’s disdain for anything achieved by Mrs Thatcher and her immediate successors, I can’t imagine him being particularly exercised by the thought of Argentina taking back control of those islands, either by force or by political agreement. The UK’s humbling continues.
In answer to the final question, No.
Meanwhile the Foreigners Office has a calculator to hand and is working out how much we should pay Argentina to take them off our hands.
It’s coming sure as eggs are eggs, and this spineless government will be unable to defend the Falklanders even if it wanted to,which it won’t.
Possibly. But I think he ignores how Ukraine has completely changed the landscape for war. Cheap drones etc could do huge damage to any invasion force at low cost. Not to mention Argentinian infrastructure including the capital. If we choose to defend them, that is. Just not worth it.
Give it a bit of time. The Falklanders may well vote to become a part of Argentina.
That not going to happen.
Are there some people hoping that Andrew might get recalled and wont dodge an Exocet second time around ? 🙂
If we armed the Typhoons on the Falklands with Meteor AAMs (each one can carry 6) then in theory they could deal with 16 F-16s from beyond visual range quite easily. The Meteor is an extremely capable missile, possibly the most capable missile in the world at present.
I doubt that the F-16s the Argentinians have will be able to field an equivalent missile, early AMRAAMs are much less good in range terms. Their radars are also much older technology than the Typhoon has.
In 1982 the Argentinian pilots fought bravely in aircraft that were almost unairworthy. Many of them had ejection seats that were using time-expired pyrotechnics and some of those forced to eject did not survive. It takes a lot of time and engineering effort to keep these aircraft serviceable, in the environment down south it’s even more difficult.
Maybe we should come up with a sharing agreement for oil and gas finds in the South Atlantic rather than be enemies. Britain used to have far better relations with Argentina.
It would seem to make sense to have batteries of anti-aircraft missiles on the islands.
Not sure if we do, to be honest I’m entirely unaware of what the RAF Regiment has for even airfield defence these days. Hopefully it’s way better than Rapier and its variants, that is 50 year old technology and is relatively short range even with the Blindfire radar.
The article surely misses the point. It is the security prosperity and co finance of the west which the left want to destroy.
The Belgrano was NOT a battleship but a 2nd hand light cruiser from the US Navy built in 1938 bought by Argentina in 1951.
I’ve explained before how Argentina can take the islands. Dinghy’s. Seriously. The traitors cannot respond to an invasion of dinghy’s in the Falklands any differently to how they’ve responded to their invitation of dinghy’s here. Because, if they did, they’d have to respond here. And then maybe, just maybe, we might look at legal immigration.
And the Sea Lion oilfield might be less important, if the Climate Change committee has it’s way. Less value in hanging on to the Falklands then, perhaps.
I doubt it. Argentina has no claim on the islands other than by proximity, something we have ignored with Chagos. The islands were inhabited by Britain before Argentina even became a country. Anyway, we can always send a task force to kick them out again, cant we.?
It was all a pretty close run thing back in 82… now we wouldn’t stand a hope of organising something like that
Seems highly unlikely while Milei is in charge. He doesn’t seem like an idiot and a costly war would undo a lot of his good work in getting the deficit down.
Also, most Argentines might believe that the Falklands are part of Argentina but would they actually support a war over them?
Yes.
They know we won’t stop them, especially with Trump on their side.
Allow the islanders to arm themselves?
Given that we can’t even defend Dover from a bunch of unarmed rag’eads the Falklands are looking pretty vulnerable.
What an absolute shitshow.
No.
That’s a bit overdone: we have multiple new frigates soon to enter service, our carriers have managed several long worldwide deployments without breaking down, and although our amphibious fleet is dangerously few, the F35’s we do have are far superior to anything AR has. Most importantly, no one can moan about the Falklands being a drain 🙂
What new frigates? They’re not under construction and given how little shipbuilding capacity we have left could we produce more than 2 every 3 years?
It doesn’t matter how long our carriers could mange to stay at sea for or how good the few planes they carry are they need escorts to protect them from naval and missile attacks.
Currently there are 2 Type 26 and 3 Type 31 frigates under construction, with 2 coming into service in the next year. By next year 5 out of 6 Type 45 destroyers will have been upgraded too.
The new frigates are due to enter into service in the 2020’s. Since when has any government funded infrastructure project been completed on time?
Ships that might be ready for action in 2028, if we’re lucky and they don’t need major repairs straight away because a major part of them is defective, aren’t going to be much use if the Falklands are invaded next year.