http://www.economist.com/node/21548242



When the wheels start to come off the economy, and you are so heavily invested in a pile of lies that you have neither options nor even data to fix it, it's time to start bravely confronting your international enemies.

Probably why they're going on and on about the Falklands again. It's a popular way of diverting the publics attention from everything else.

I'm sure Cameron would love a go at Argentina to cement himself as a true Disciple of Thatcher.

Perhaps, but the forces couldn't do it anymore

He would, he would love it, absolutely love it. He went to Eton you know.

No - they are far too stretched already. We aren’t running an Empire any more, and we can’t just make the Commonwealth countries join in like we could 100 years ago.

If you can, watch Paxman’s series on the Empire. The first episode was rather good.

I think the current theory is that we couldn't retake the Falklands, so we have a few Eurofighters, a sub and a lot of troops already there to stop an invasion as it happens.

Prevention being better than cure.

Exactly

If you look at some of the analysis that some of the more serious papers have done they reckon that Argentina would not be able to undertake an invasion either. They have not upgrade their fighters or ships since the Falklands War and so they are well behind the curve militarily

Their best chance would be to fill a jumbo full of Special Forces and then have it declare a mayday (hoping we would not shoot down a possible civilian aircraft) and land it on the Falklands runway and then try and gain control of that and neutralise the fighters / anti air long enough to fly in troops

If the papers have thought of it, you can assume the military have thought of it too. The obvious question under those circumstances would instantly be 'why is a jumbo jet flying anywhere near the Falklands?' It's hundreds of miles from any population centre and it's nowhere near any flight routes. so it's be pretty obvious TBH. Even if the plane did land, I'd image the locals would be quite suspicious. Any such plane landing at Mount Pleasant would find itself put as far away from anything interesting as possible, with as many guns as they can muster (and possibly heavier things too) pointed at it until it was checked out and found to be safe. If you've got half a mile of barren runway between you and what you want to get to, with the entire areas covered by trained snipers and a few .50 cals, you're going to get a lot of dead Argentinians before they do very much damage, if any at all.

Jon

Argentina have also recently requested that they replace the weekly Chilean air service to the Falklands with one from Argentina.

I hope the islanders told them where to stick that idea.

May not be the islander's choice - quite a lot of South America are currently banning the arrival of ships coming from the Falklands, they could equally do so with planes. However, it seems to me Argentina very much want to be seen as the 'good guys' on the international stage, and outright withdrawal of supply lines to an isolated civilian population makes it pretty hard to sell yourselves as being the reasonable one.

As it is though it's probably an attempt at economic pressure rather than a prelude to invasion, because it's not really a practicable idea in any real sense. Even if the flights start to come from Argentina, it won't be a big enough plane to carry that many troops. Even if they do land and do get control of the airfield, the counter measure is simple - make sure a couple of typhoons and the refuelling jet are up in the air when the plane arrives each week. If they do that, it'll be virtually impossible for Argentina to reinforce their initial assault force by air (and it would take days by sea, if they could do it at all), they'd be vastly outnumbered (at least 5-1, possibly nearer 10-1) so their only options would be to surrender or be slaughtered. They could do some damage, possibly even disable the runway for a short period, but at a cost of throwing away any goodwill Argentina might have with the world community for another 30 years. Governments tend to look very unapprovingly at their compatriots using civil air transport and/or faking an emergency for military purposes - it's the kind of thing terrorists do, not properly established nations.

If that's the best chance they have, frankly they really shouldn't bother. It'd be right up there with Gallipolli in terms of military strategy.

Argentina needs to forget about taking Las Malvinas by force, it's simply not going to happen any time soon. I still say the best option they have is hearts & minds rather than bombs & bullets.

Jon