Hello all, and welcome to my first ever Think Defence article.
My name is Sir Humphrey, and I’m the author of a small blog called the Thin Pinstriped Line.
Some of you may know me from ARRSE, PPRUNE and Warships1, where I post (or posted) under a variety of different usernames. I originally set my blog up to write about some of the issues in Defence at the moment, and try to look in more depth at what was really going on in some issues which were being inaccurately reported by the media. It’s also served as a means of providing some more in depth analysis for other issues as well.
I was contacted by the owner of this site, and asked whether I’d be interested in occasionally writing some articles here too. I’m delighted to say that I’m now able to do so, and that from now on you’ll be seeing the odd longer analytical piece from me on a variety of issues. I won’t be posting here every week, but between this site and my own blog, you should see a fair amount of my work. My aims here remain the same as on my blog – to look a little deeper into the story, and try to present a more positive (dare I say balanced) perspective than may sometimes be seen in the media. My one philosophy though is that in the MOD decisions, no matter how odd they appear, are almost always taken for a reason that makes sense – the challenge is making sense of these reasons!
In terms of my professional background, I have a strong background to a lot of the issues described on this site, and have served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Hopefully this will come through in some of the pieces that I do. As always with my pieces, I am happy to discuss via the comments page or on my blog.
For my first piece here, I’ve combined the three articles on my blog about the Falkland Islands, to try to turn them into a single article looking at the nature of the threat, and the challenges faced by an attacker to the islands. Enjoy!
[This is a more sensible post than my article about our pants, TD]
The reality of the Falkland Islands dispute – why quiet diplomacy matters more than willy waving and why the Falkland Islands are unlikely to be invaded again.
A perennial favourite headline of so many newspapers, particularly tabloids, is to proclaim that Argentina threatens the Falklands, that the Royal Navy couldn’t possibly mount a task force again, and that western civilisation as we know it is threatened by the fact that a territorial dispute exists between Argentina and the UK. For this inaugural Think Defence article, I want to try and look beneath the dispute, to try and examine the real level of threat to the Falklands, and to also explain why it is highly unlikely that the Argentineans could repeat 1982 without some spectacular investment, planning and luck.
Argentine Bellicosity
The Falklands are an election issue, and an easy means of unifying the Argentine people against an external wrong that must be righted. At its most simple, the dispute has little to do with any geographic claim, but instead provides successive Argentinean leadership figures with an easy means to distract attention from any internal domestic woes, or political problems.
Almost without fail, the Falklands will be mentioned in any Argentinean political campaign, usually to much alarm from the UK media, but this is as much a reality of Argentine politics as an election campaign is in the UK when the parties roll out the tired old cliches of protecting the NHS, investing and whatever else is the mantra of the day. In other words, to talk of the Falkland’s in an Argentine election is normal – its when they don’t get brought up that we should start to worry.
In recent months, there has been much alarm in the UK over the fact that Argentina appears to be placing pressure on other South American countries to ban Falkland Islands registered vessels from ports, to increase pressure on the UK getting access for its military assets staging through South American countries, and to try to raise the issue at every opportunity in international fora.
The reality is that these efforts have achieved very little – international initiatives are commonplace, and many countries sign up to them, not because they passionately care about the issues at stake, but because it is easier to go along with something in order to keep your neighbour sweet, so you can call in the favour when you need it. It is highly unlikely that Brazil or Uruguay particularly care about the Falkland Islands, but they do care that they share borders with a large nation with a reasonable economy, and that annoying them over something like the Falklands is more hassle than its worth.
So, even though the press would have us believe that the world as we know it is threatened by these statements, the truth is that nothing has really changed, and that the dispute remains primarily one between the UK and Argentina. What could change this? In reality, it is hard to see a situation emerging where Brazil or Uruguay would willingly close access to their ports permanently, or send vessels to side with an Argentine cause – it would cause immense economic damage, and the potential political fallout would be enormous. Is Brazil seriously willing to risk isolating itself for an attack on a foreign nation in support of Argentine goals?
The reality is that we’ll probably see Argentina continue to try to press the small advantages in local organisations, and see very verbose declarations which will then be seized on by the Argentines as evidence that others support them. Then, in reality, nothing will change and Argentina will continue as before. The moment that the UK should really begin to worry about wider South American support for the Argentines position is when they follow through on pledges, or begin to link wider diplomatic support or pledges of assistance to movement on the Falklands issue. Until this point, declarations are little more than worthless – great if you want to feel good about something, but in reality delivering nothing of tangible value.
UK Diplomatic Response
There are some who feel that the UK should be far more assertive over the Falkland’s, and take a tougher line with countries that support the Argentine position. The question is what would this achieve? Having worked in the diplomatic arena, it is clear that while in the short term highly emotive statements make the originating country feel good about itself, it quickly causes more harm than good. If the UK threatened to sever relations, or cut off trade to countries which supported Argentina’s stance, then what would actually be achieved? In reality such a move would isolate the UK in South America, do immense damage to our long term reputation in the region, and bring countries on the fence into the Argentine camp.
It is important to remember that diplomatic actions have very long term consequences – arguably the UK is still dealing with the aftermath of messy colonial incidents from the 19th century today as a result of its possession of the Falklands. If the UK sought to view its entire relationship with South America through the prism of the Falklands, then there is real danger that our longer term ability to influence, support and work with many countries would be harmed. Countries remember insults for far longer than compliments – in many ways diplomacy is like children at school arguing over who likes or hates one another the most. Flexing the UK muscle now would merely irritate and in the longer term, isolate us and do more harm than good to our position.
What can the UK do to counter the constant Argentine charm offensive? Well for starters it needs to be realistic about goals – the UK has to ensure it retains good relations with the continent to ensure that 8000 miles from home, 2000 people and 1500 plus service personnel remain safe, secure and with open lines of communication in perpetuity (or until the Falkland Islanders determine they want another way of life). Pissing off your neighbours, acting like the local bully and generally throwing your weight around won’t achieve this – it will achieve the opposite.
The UK has to try to secure a form of quiet diplomacy in South America – an accepting policy which realises that other south American countries have to live with Argentina, and that they will sign up for things, but equally one which applies discrete threats / carrots / sticks at a point where nations will not be publicly humiliated, nor in a way which merely fuels Argentina’s policy goals. This means not reacting in a manner which will make tabloid readers feel good about themselves, but which ensures continuity of access to ports, airports, logistical facilities and prevents South American nations from feeling isolated, humiliated and unwilling to make concessions to the UK.
The worst thing the UK can do now is to go on an aggressive diplomatic offensive – it would play straight into Argentine hands, and make our life much harder. Our primary goal is to keep the Falkland Islands secure and British for as long as they want to do so – this goal is much easier to achieve when other nations are unlikely to back Argentine actions.
In the next part of this article, we’ll look at why the Argentines lack the ability to invade the Falklands, and also why, despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail, it is unlikely that a small team of special forces soldiers (even if they had escaped from a military stockade to the LA underground), could take out the UK garrison in one night.
Part 2 – Planning Considerations to capture the Islands
Following on from the earlier piece about the diplomatic issues surrounding the Falklands, Humphrey now wants to take a look at the reality of the challenge facing any potential aggressor, and to show the planning considerations that any J5 planning shack is going to have to think about when looking at a successful attack on the islands.
Firstly, a mild disclaimer – unlike many Falkland Island commentators (FI), Humphrey has actually been to the Falklands, and has a very good understanding of the military structure and capability on the islands. Because of this, the author is not going to discuss some specifics, and may seem vague in other areas. This is because he is one of the few people left who think that PERSEC isn’t a dirty word.
Secondly, unlike some websites / publications, Humphrey has no time for the concept of ‘ORBAT Porn’, by which he means the lining up of two paper ORBATS between two countries, and deciding that as X is greater than Y, Y wins. It’s pointless, silly and as seen in countless wars over the years, almost always an inaccurate means of predicting the outcome of a crisis.
For the purposes of this article, Humphrey is looking at the current balance of power as it stands NOW. Not in 10 years, not if Argentina gets new LPDs, not if the UK gets CVF, and not if the Death Star parks in orbit and uses its super laser to wipe out all penguins.
The first part of this article looks at wider planning considerations that need to be taken into account when considering an invasion. The next part will look at specific considerations relating to the islands defences.
Situation
The first, and most critical question that must be asked when considering an invasion is ‘why’? The Falklands serve as a useful lightning conductor to Argentine leaders – whenever distracted by political problems at home, they can quickly rally support around the concept of the Falklands issue. Invasion not only removes this as a lightning conductor, but also opens up a range of longer term problems – a quick invasion without bloodshed followed by Argentine occupation is a good idea in theory, but a leader would have to be certain that this could be achieved. Failure would result in them losing office, power, and probably liberty as well.
Whenever considering the Falkland Islands, one has to ask ‘what does the President of Argentina personally gain from an invasion’? The reality is that unless they have the most successful invasion in history, it’s likely to be the end of their presidency. Few people willingly relinquish power until they have to – it is hard to envisage circumstances where an Argentine leader would do so over the Falklands.
Military Planning
But, assuming the go ahead was issued, then the first planning consideration when considering the invasion of the islands is what is the defined Argentinean end state? In other words, what is their view of campaign success? In 1982, the Argentines arguably defined their end state as the initial occupation of the islands militarily, and did not plan, nor assume any requirement to fight beyond this point. The author would argue that any future Argentine plan needs to define its end state as ‘the successful capture of the islands, followed by the mounting of a sufficiently robust defence as to prevent their recapture in perpetuity’.
One of the problems with looking at this potential conflict is that everyone assumes that if Argentina invades, then the UK will immediately turn around and launch ‘Task Force 2’, followed by a short bloody war in which the UK either kicks Argentina off the islands again, or is sent home humbled and never again enters the South Atlantic. Humphrey would suggest that this is unwise to consider – after all, UK planning is based on holding the islands for perpetuity (where perpetuity means ‘for as long as the Islanders want us to remain’), and that if Argentina seeks to capture the islands militarily, it needs to be ready to defend them in perpetuity as well.
So, the first thing to ask is whether Argentina has sufficient military capability to not only invade the islands now, but also defend them in the long term without a major increase in defence spending.
The next issue when planning such an invasion is the level of violence and casualties one is willing to inflict upon an enemy force to achieve mission success. In 1982, the Argentine attack was predicated on landing roughly battalion sized forces to take out a sub company (barely platoon) sized formation. Its often forgotten that Argentine SF made a deliberate attempt to destroy the marine barracks, presumably hoping to take out the marines in their beds, rather than have a fight.
The world has changed dramatically since 1982 and the arrival of 24/7 media coverage, global news and analysis and the internet & other social media means that any attack or use of force will be questioned. To force the UK defending forces to surrender will mean either denying them the ability to fight or to sustain, or inflicting sufficient casualties to make the ground commander decide further resistance is futile.
Let’s put this in context for a moment. The FI are garrisoned normally by up to 1500 military personnel, and supported by a range of logistics and infrastructure that will enable the garrison to continue fighting for a considerable period of time without requiring external support. For an Argentine attack to put the UK garrison in the position where it has to surrender due to an inability to sustain itself, we have to assume the loss of air and maritime resupply for a prolonged period of time, backed up by an aggressive land campaign which reduces stocks. This would seem to require a maritime and air presence beyond that which the Argentines currently possess.
Similarly, to put the defending force in a position where it has lost sufficient casualties that it feels it has not option but to surrender, one would need to inflict realistically more casualties than the UK has lost in Iraq & Afghanistan combined in over 10 years of fighting, and inflict them in a time scale probably measured in days. This would again require a very aggressive campaign, and one which would be quickly portrayed in global media as an exceptionally aggressive and brutal attack by Argentine forces.
The reality would be for Argentina that any attack has to be done in such a manner so as to force a surrender, without causing a massacre. Unless this occurs, then global opinion will swing firmly against Argentina, and it is likely that UNSCRs, or even possible military support from allies may be offered to the UK in any attack. Argentina has to be seen to be a liberating force in the manner of the Indians in Goa in 1961, and not the Iraqi ‘annexation’ of Kuwait in 1990. In other words, a short military attack, limited resistance and then general global apathy, despite anguished pleas from the defending power (in this case Portugal, which the author understands still technically claims Goa is a part of its empire).
So, even prior to the launching of an invasion, Argentina is faced with a series of high level policy & political challenges – these can be summarised below:
- What is their justification for war?
- What is their desired end state?
- How do they recapture the islands using minimal force?
- How do they hold onto the islands in perpetuity?
- How do they manage international reaction to the invasion?
- Can they afford an international crisis / incident on this scale?
- Is it really worth it?
The next part of this article will look in more depth at how an Argentine commander would need to consider options, based partly on their ORBAT, but also partly on the defensive considerations
Part 3: The reality of capturing the Falkland Islands.
In earlier posts, the author has looked at the threat posed by Argentina to the Falkland Islands, and has suggested that if you ignore bellicose public statements, then the reality is that the islands are unlikely to be attacked by Argentina anytime soon.
In this final post on the subject, the intent is to explore some of the challenges surrounding any potential aggressor who wishes to attack the islands, and the sort of planning considerations that they need to consider when factoring in an attack. This is perhaps more timely given that yet another senior general (Sir Mike Jackson) has now claimed that if the islands were lost, then the UK could not recover them.
The challenge
Any potential aggressor intending to occupy the Falklands needs to plan an assault around the following factors.
- A remote airbase with good ground defences, and located a not inconsiderable distance from the nearest credible port is the centre of gravity.
- The defending force is well equipped, and has considerable operational experience accrued over the last 30 years of occupying the terrain.
- There are multiple defensive structures dispersed across the facility which would require potent munitions to deny.
- The facility is located some distance from international airlanes, and is unlikely to see significant commercial air traffic. There are multiple satellite facilities to provide radar coverage. There are air defences present, both air and ground based.
- There is a not inconsiderable maritime force located in the region, which is self-sustaining and which may include an SSN.
- Any attack has to be conducted in a manner which denies the defending force the ability to reinforce, and must force a surrender of all occupying forces in under the time it would take to begin the reinforcement plans from the UK.
- Any prolonged attack is going to lead to calls for talks, and be highly damaging to international opinion against the aggressor. A swift fait acompli is essential to secure victory.
What this means is that any Argentine commander has to consider some immensely challenging tactical problems which in turn build in time delay. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and it is likely that any assault will encounter delays. Lets now examine these considerations in a little more depth.
When considering the defence of Mount Pleasant Airfield (MPA), commentators who have not been to the islands often make the mistake of assuming it is a small facility which could easily be overrun. The reality is somewhat different – it occupies a large area of ground, and has many highly dispersed facilities. While the main admin / life support hub is located in the near legendary ‘death star’ complex, the remainder of the facility is spread over a large geographically dispersed area. This means that any assault has to factor in the challenge of denying multiple facilities, many of which may be defendable, and in doing so while operating on unfamiliar terrain.
To even get close to the facility would require a significant march by troops. Not exhausting in itself, but it would probably require insertion of special forces by SSK – this limits the locations that landings can be conducted. The terrain of the islands is not particularly conducive to building shelters, and the islanders are exceptionally suspicious of outsiders. At best the Argentines could hope to land a small SF force (roughly 50 men), which then has to avoid detection while it marches to the airbase.
At this point, it then has to conduct an assault against a large, well defended facility which is designed for the purpose of being used to fight a defensive battle, and they have to do so against a garrison which outnumbers them 30-1. They have to complete this assault and force the British to a position where they wish to negotiate for surrender prior to the airfield commencing reinforcement flights.
The airfield was designed in the 1980s at the height of the cold war, and reflects much of the thinking at the time. It is likely that it could easily be repaired in the event of a denial attempt, and there is likely to be sufficient room to permit landings in the event of damage. It would take a very significant attack to deny the runway to the point where it could not be used further. Such an attack would require equipment and munitions accuracy beyond that currently possessed by Argentina.
Any air movements, either transports to land troops, or bomber attacks are going to be picked up by early warning radar stations. There will be significant warning of inbound air attacks, and there are plentiful defences in place to handle them. Any air attack has to conduct a long overwater transit, and then will only have seconds on station to deliver its munitions. It will be doing so against a force likely to be expecting it. Similarly, if transport aircraft were inbound, then if needs be, they need not even be shot down. The base could merely park sufficient vehicles across the runways at regular intervals so as to prevent the plane from landing. While some bad fiction writers postulate about the idea of an Entebbe style strike, the reality is that the planes have to land first to deliver this strike. Again, a failure to land first time and commence the assault will see the reinforcement plan kicking into action. Also, given the lack of air traffic in the region, one would hope that it is unlikely that anyone would be fooled by an aircraft faking an SOS message and then landing to disgorge hundreds of armed troops.
The defensive structures of the base suggest that significant munitions would be required to deny some facilities. It is all very well landing 50 SF, but what happens when people deploy into trench and bunker complexes which require artillery or mortars to deny? This then requires the landing of further troops ashore with the ability to call in support fire – in turn this requires both the ability to find a beach where a surprise landing can be carried out and artillery moved into position to conduct fires missions, and to do so without being detected. Again, the author would suggest that the sighting of an Argentine battery digging in, would be enough to trigger the reinforcement plan activation.
The rule of thumb is that an assault against well dug in and defended troops, particularly well motivated ones, with reasonable supplies, is that it requires a ratio of 3-1 attackers to defenders to be certain of success. Assuming a garrison of 1500, this means that Argentina would need to move sufficient troops to land 4500 troops on the ground to conduct the attack. More troops would be needed to provide support, and logistical work. Let’s assume 5500 troops are needed to be certain of putting the attack force together.
Firstly, the Argentine navy doesn’t have the ability to conduct an amphibious operation carrying 5500 troops. In fact, very few navies do. Even the Royal Navy, arguably one of the worlds more potent amphibious forces, would struggle to deliver more than 1500 personnel in its current structure. To successfully land the troops, supplies and equipment needed to crack MPA in a conventional assault, Argentina would need to be build the world’s second largest amphibious force, develop the doctrine and training required to ensure that they could land successfully, and then ensure that their troops are capable of doing so without messing the plan up. These troops are then required to land, march a significant distance to the objective and conduct an assault against a well dug in force which is likely to expecting them. Significantly, this force will have got a reasonable amount of operational experience, compared to an Argentine force which hasn’t seen action for 30 years. The Argentines are expected to do this while maintaining complete surprise, as if the reinforcement plan starts, and more UK troops are flown in, then they go from 3-1 ratio, to likely 1-1, or worse. Oh, all the while, Argentina needs to maintain the element of complete surprise while building up, training and delivering this invasion force to the Islands.
The other key point – if Argentina has built an amphibious fleet, and then sails it with deliberate intent to the islands, it needs to be certain that the UK maritime assets have been denied. Otherwise, they will need to be prepared to encounter a range of maritime capabilities, potentially including nuclear submarines that will present a significant tactical challenge.
The final point – this attack has to be done in a manner which denies the defending forces the ability to operate, and for their commander to feel he has no option but to surrender, and this has to be done in less than 24 hours, or else reinforcements will arrive. This would require an untested force engaging a defensive force which has spent 30 years preparing the ground for this fight. The fight will have to occur on the defenders terms, and would pose an enormous tactical challenge to the aggressor.
There is some suggestion in some quarters of fantastical ideas of cruise liners disgorging SF into Stanley – which would be a challenge given the lack of adequate berths, or alternatively somehow capturing the town. While this would be challenging, it still comes back to the earlier issue of a lack of manpower to actually get on the ground, and also the fact that MPA is the centre of gravity. In extremis, the loss of Stanley would not lose the UK hold on the islands. MPA is the key, and it remains a well-defended installation.
While much remains uncertain, and while this author deeply hopes that such a situation is never tested for real, he would suggest that any potential attack against the islands using current Argentine ORBATS would result in a very bloody and humiliating defeat for Argentina, and one that is completely unnecessary.
UK policy is not to lose the islands in the first place – the author would suggest that the current force laydown ensures that this remains a realistic policy goal.
Think Defence 
Cracking stuff Sir H, welcome to TD and its merry bunch of contributors
As a comment it seems that Argentine sabre rattling at the UN has fell on rather deaf ears, as highlighted by Merco Press
http://en.mercopress.com/2012/02/21/timerman-falklands-militarization-claim-with-little-echo-at-un-admits-argentine-press
Or, I thought a better response would be
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=your+not+singing+anymore&oq=your+not+singing+anymore&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=490l4329l0l4450l24l23l0l13l13l0l168l1012l4.5l9l0
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Excellent analysis. I argued the casualties point in an earlier post: 1 death (’82) & no idea of how far it would eventually escalate = worldwide view of a quaint colonial dispute that got a little bit out of hand and should really be best left to the participants to calm things down;
Dozens of deaths & wounded in a surprise attack and now with the knowledge of potentially hundreds more if it was successful and the islands need retaking (‘?) = Hugo Chavez as the only man left standing in Argentina’s corner.
SSNs are Britain’s trump card here. They were a successful deterrent in ’77; would have been in ’82 if not for the cock-up of using a incorrect press report to signal that one was on the way (i.e. not on station yet – feel free to adjust your invasion schedule accordingly) and now they have TLAM. So any air or navy base on the mainland must face the prospect that they can be safely targeted, without any risky SAS thru Chile caper.
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“(even if they had escaped from a military stockade to the LA underground)”
Sorry, the A-Team is busy. Can the B-Team help you instead? 😛
I do agree with Sir H that it really isn’t in Argentina’s interests to invade the Falklands. He focused on the initial assault and it’s difficulties, but I think any ongoing occupation of the Islands itself would face significant problems considering that the long time residents of the area have made it abundantly clear that they do not want Argetina there. Can the Argentinians justify parking a force there that the residents hate and with the concurrent risks of insurection and attrition due to guerrilla warfare?
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The tiny resident population could easily be relocated elsewhere – for their own safety of course….
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@Chris
How nice. I’m sure the residents, all 2,000 of them, would appreciate it.
Argentina Hilton you said?
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@Sir Humprey: thanks for the cogent analysis. I agree with most of it, but I feel it misses the main point that the coup de main crowd make.
MPA is the centre of gravity, but you don’t have to destroy or capture it in the first instance to nullify it: you just have to deny the runway for 24 hours. Some SF teams with ATGW can land from an SSK or small boat, set up 3km from the runway. One fine morning, out of the 3 operational Typhoons, 2 are destroyed and the runway is effectively shut. The RIC instantly set off after the SF teams, but a para company is dropped to secure Mare Harbour an hour later. Four hours after this, AR warships are disgorging troops and vehicles that were on “exercise” off Patagonia. After a battalion group is landed unopposed from a RO-RO at Mare, it marches off to attack MPA, whose RIC has hurriedly returned to the airfield. The RIC cannot, without artillery or armoured vehicles, do much other than sit in trenches with the RAF and cooks and bottle washers while the AR battle group attacks the Rapier posts one by one, then progresses onto the base. The fight is bloody, but with the air defences down, air support from the mainland arrives and tips the scale against the defenders.
We can’t do anything much. The guard ship arrives after 12 hours, but it cannot stop the flood of aircraft flying in, since they can route around even a T45 and MPA is over the horizon unless the T45 is actually docked. Even if an SSN arrives, it can’t do much about all those AA airliners airlifting in a brigade group. It cannot do much about the follow up civilian ships, filled with jubilant women and children that will lift the rest of the stores to the islands either. We could always drop a para battalion to recapture MPA, but since we cannot refuel our C17’s in mid air, it would be a one way trip, and we don’t have enough AAR to mount using C130J. We can always send a task force, but it will take a month to arrive, and without carriers defence against AR’s Super Etendards relies on us seeing the sea skimmers as they pop up over the horizon: we cannot “shoot the archer”. It might be possible, but the risks are very high.
Disapproval of AR’s action will last 5 minutes, if that. The General Assembly has always voted that the “Malvinas” is a colonial issue, and despite AR behaving like the coloniser over South Georgia and the FI, and the forced ethnic cleansing of awkward islanders, the world will happily look the other way. Our plea to the French to let us borrow CDG will remain unanswered, since pissing off South America doesn’t mesh with French interests. Obama hates us because he hates most of his allies.
We will have been humiliated, and it won’t end there. We will have learned the hard way that Basra has consequences and that relying on others for capabilities needed to defend against even third world powers is flat out stupid.
We could improve the defences at MPA: station an MLRS battery, add a squadron of CVR(T), add some land based Harpoon, develop an AAR probe for our C17’s…all useful stuff. But in the final analysis, without a carrier with even minimally effective air defence aircraft and AEW on board, we cannot take the islands back, which gives AR a great incentive to try.
And Argentina didn’t even need to develop the world’s second largest amphibious force!
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@Observer
I think holding the Falklands for Argentina would be a long running political problem rather than a military one, as a guerrilla or insurgency movement would be hard for the following reasons.
1a.) Staying in plain sight – Very small population/settlement sizes ‘sea’ for the insurgent fish to hide in.
1b.) Hiding out in countryside (camp) – Quality British bureaucracy! If any resident is missing you exactly who it is, who his/her relatives are, what land or remote buildings they own, etc.
2.) No industrial centre and no need to hold any pop. centre except for symbolism. All meaningful resources (fish, oil) are off the islands so bar one port (existing or new build) you can eventually move all your bases & airstrips out into the camp where with a bit of ISTAR people can be seen coming from miles off
3.) No international border in which the insurgents can cross to rest or smuggle replenishment arms.
4.) Pop. dependant on outside supply so easy to enforce sanction punishments (albeit exasperating political fallout).
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In case some of you haven’t seen this,
That is part one of four.
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@wf
I’m not sure if you came across one of solomon’s post saying almost the same thing, my reply and a lot of others are similar. Real war not = C&C.
Such a simplistic plan will never succeed, too simplistic, no fallback, all or nothing proposition based on a slim reed.
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@Wstr
You got a point, irregular warfare looks like it’s going to be difficult. Political pressure it is then.
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@wf
You state that an SSN can do nothing about the airliners and cruise ships (ok, fine) but you did have it conveniently arriving after you had already landed your battalion group; something that could be prevented if already on station and forewarned.
Also if we can’t secure the airbases with 1500 men before the arrival of the stated MANPADS armed Argie SF team and airborne coy (200 ish ?), what is to stop us shutting down the airstrips for -military- flights exactly the same way?
You are right though that mixed civilian/military cargo or pers on cruise ships or civilian airliners would indeed be political suicide for the British to engage, but you must also consider the political impact on Argentina for using those civilians as shields, even if they were willing volunteers.
The UN’s weak position is based on the status quo standoff, and a hope that things will be resolved peacefully in the long run. However start killing dozens of servicemen in taking the islands; enforcing the suppression of a whole pop’s right to right of self-determination (potentially also removing them) and deliberately utilising civilians into your frontline military ops in violation of the rules of war and you may see the UN take a different stance. As for ethnic cleansing this is a post-Balkans, post-E.Timor world so I would not expect the matter to be forgotten in 5 mins/ That level of group amnesia only happens with respect to Africa, where no UN member with the assets to prevent it, wants to get bogged down with boots on the ground.
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Some SF teams with ATGW can land from an SSK or small boat, set up 3km from the runway
Wouldn’t that actually be within the perimeter?
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@X I’ve seen it before and it’s a great documentary (by two Brazilian film students if I recall)
What I really like is the general understated approach of the islanders and their refusal to hate the Argentine people (although some polite contempt for the Kirchner govt). Their keep-clam-and-carry-on approach is a refreshing change to all the jingoistic dick-measuring (by both sides) going on in the press and many comment forums.
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That’s meant to be ‘calm’ not ‘clam’ – although I confess no knowledge of the food stored in their refrigerators. Keep clam may indeed be a sensible strategy! 🙂
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@Wstr
*ssshhh!!…*
The clams are a secret biological weapon to be served to invading Argentinian soldiers after fermenting in the sun for 4 hrs.
😉
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@Alex: fair point! But securing an airbase the size of MPA with a company is difficult.
@Observer: I didn’t see that thread that I can remember. War is certainly not C&C (never played such stuff!), but the thin reed is MPA. Unless we have something larger than a company, we cannot effectively dominate the area, and if the Typhoon’s cannot fly and reinforcements cannot land, MPA is a large zero as far as defence is concerned.
@Wstr: we cannot maintain an SSN permanently in the FI. We only have 7, we would need 3 to keep one permanently here, and we have plenty of need for them elsewhere
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An excellent post Sir Humphrey. I shall attempt to visit your blog more often if this is representative of your writing.
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An excellent post. WF you conveniently place the guard ship in the wrong area, you have a para company land despite teh fact that as soon as the first ATGW was fired the base would be stood to so HMG and rapier and manpad plus 1300 rifles.
Your 50 kt Argentinian Ro RO sails serenely throught the 40 M wide gap into Mare Harbour whilst the Port and Maritime Troop decide not to put a few Javelin in to the side of her and machine gun the hulk.
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There are some interesting comments here. A few salient points to note though:
Firstly, the airbase is designed for survivability -this is crucial to understand. It is built to be in use despite repeated bombardments, as per many airfields of that era.
Secondly, the scenario postulated by WF requires multiple things to go well for the Argentines, and assumes no notice. For instance, if you go to the MPA complex, you’ll realise that its actually fairly difficult to plant yourself in a firing position where you can happily shoot off missiles at a Typhoon.
The islands will have forward warning of any inbound Argentine air attack – there are multiple early warning radars on the islands, and any move, particularly at a point where the islands are alerted, means the local air defences (which include Rapier) will be fully alerted to an inbound aerial assault. Also, the ability of aerial assaults to overwhelm a fortficiation is overrated in this authors opinion. They may work with the element of surprise, but given the advance notice that is likely, and the fact that any air attack has to drop into a fully alerted facility, likely to be expecting them, then the chances of surprise are minimal.
Its also making strong use of assumptions to assume that the RORO ferry can sail up to a military installation at the east cove military port, and quietely land without any support. I’ve been to ECMP, I’ve seen how narrow its facilities are, and also how easy it would be to deny the facility to any potential aggressor. What happens if it is denied – you suddenly have a RORO sitting there looking terribly vulnerable.
More to the point, these landings occur, without any consideration for the logistics support required to fight on. By all means land and conduct a shock and awe attack -what happens when you need to resupply, feed or deliver first aid to your troops?
To my mind, the plan postulated by WF sadly falls into the ‘Death Star Superlaser’ category of Falklands secenarios. In other words, it assumes the Argentines have perfect kit, working first every time – a highly unlikely proposition indeed.
As for landbased harpoon – why on earth would we need that? There is surely a logical fallacy in arguing that the sites are vulnerable to attack, then arguing that more landbased sites are required?
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@wf
Apologies I usually state my assumptions. I was assuming that Britain would have more than 12 days warning (UK-based sub transit time). Like Pearl Harbor in ’82 there were warnings aplenty and all of them ignored or downplayed. e.g. The Buenos Aires Herald (incidentally the only newspaper with the balls to report on the ‘disappeared’ under the Junta) published rumours that were swirling around the capital cocktail circuit in early Feb. The British Military Attaché fired off a specific invasion warning in Mar to Rex Hunt, cc’d FCO and MoD. The invasion itself didn’t happen until April 2.
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@Observer. Plenty of sheep too, maybe we can inflict haggis on them as well, or does that fall under Hague Convention restrictions!
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Welcome Sir Humphrey!
Excellent post! A clear level-headed look at todays senario rather thinking along the lines of ’82.
This should be linked to any post that plays “….but the Falklands!” card.
Deffo gonna re-read and check out your blog if its like this 🙂
Cheers TD for this one c:
*btw wf; our C-17’s can and do carry out mid air refueling – they use the probe system, which an ally could be used (if said ally wants to use Ascension anymore 😉 ) and would make plumbing for probes easier I’d Imagine, then there’s St Helena Airport (I know its a while off yet, but this hypothetical situation means this airport must come into account)
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bah! TD please bring back the edit function :c
I mean, the C-17 uses the boom method, along with our E-3D’s
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Great article Sir Humphrey.
This seems relevant:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/9098633/Cristina-Kirchner-told-to-leave-Falkland-Islanders-alone-by-Argentinas-intellectuals.html
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@APATS: the guard ship can’t be everywhere at once. Last time, it was frantically steaming back from South Georgia.
1300 rifles available in MPA? All organised for more than local defence? Only the RIC could be considered mobile, and with no fighting vehicles, it would be likely to concentrate on defending MPA anyway.
I wasn’t aware that the RLC usually carried Javelin at troop level, but no matter, if they did Javelin would head for centre mass: not likely to do a lot of good. Now if they issued Milan to the RLC…
A 50kt catamaran is not required. Just a ferry that happens to be steaming along outside Falklands waters minding it’s own business. Bahía San Blas would fit into Mare Harbour.
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@Mike: we don’t have any boom equipped tankers sadly. The RAF’s E-3’s are fitted with probes
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All miltary personnel deployed to the FI now complete OMG 525 course. Culminating in the static trained Soldier Shoot at 50, 100, 200 and 300M, they all deploy with their own weapon. As Sir Humphrey pointed out and I can confirm there are plenty of well positioned static defensive obstacles to man.
We did not have a guard ship in 1982 at all. The 50 ky quip was a joke based on the SOA required to mtke your timings work.
So we will ignore the Argentinian military amphib steaming just outside the FI teritorial waters?
These scebatios are exercised reguarly and there is a red cell input that comes up with and test scenarios. Without going into details the ability to deny the enterance to ECMP to a hostile vessel has actually benn thought about and I would not like to be on the bridge if they tried it.
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I am still worried about a few ship loads of ardent Argentine nationalists beaching their ferries on Stanley’s sea front.
And I am also concerned how an honourable Argentine defeat at the hands of imperialist European pigs would play out in the UN. I think we have to be careful not to count too much on the UK’s world standing to garner sympathy. I think Brazil has to been seen playing the game now it is a rising power. But I am not sure many would stop trading with her, if any, if she came out right and supported the Argentines. (The French School of Trade over Geo-poltics!)
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@Sir Humphrey: replying in order.
“It is built to be in use despite repeated bombardments, as per many airfields of that era”. Absolutely, hence the RE Field squadron. But not *during* bombardments. AR don’t have to shut it, just stop the Typhoon’s flying for a few hours.
“requires multiple things to go well for the Argentines”. Agreed. But nothing that strains credulity. Given the density of troops in the area of Mare Harbour, and the availability of one guard ship, landing an SF unit is not impossible. A nighttime company sized parachute assault is hardly impossible either, unless we have a Rapier unit actually in Mare Harbour. I’m not suggesting they drop into MPA!
“The islands will have forward warning of any inbound Argentine air attack”. They will. But if Typhoon isn’t flying, there’s not much they can do about it.
“Its also making strong use of assumptions to assume that the RORO ferry can sail up to a military installation at the east cove military port, and quietly land without any support”. Hence the parachute company, for that support.
“By all means land and conduct a shock and awe attack -what happens when you need to resupply, feed or deliver first aid to your troops”. MPA can accept 747’s. Sounds like a great way to receive support to me.
“There is surely a logical fallacy in arguing that the sites are vulnerable to attack, then arguing that more landbased sites are required”. Seems logical to me: land based site is vulnerable due to minimalist defences, so reinforce those defences. I’m just saying that the super paranoid would look at the FI and see a requirement for a brigade and a wing of Typhoon’s. We don’t have a 500000 person Army on call all the time, we operate on the basis that we roll with the punches and then take it back. Having a carrier available allows us to save on the “preventing smuggling” mode of defence planning, if we want to become all Napoleonic 🙂
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@Wstr: there are always plenty of warnings. The trouble is, they only seem obvious in hindsight 😦
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Wf, I am pretty sure we will be paying a lot more attention to the warnings this time. Inside 48 hours of feeling the need we can have spearhead battalion Hq and 1 other company on the ground. I have not checked who the spear head Battalion currently are but the odds on them not having had recent combat experience are long.
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I agree with WF on the point of one company being to little to effectively guard MPA.
I would argue that their might be reasons to re-build Stanley Port Airfield to international Standards and have all civil flights, national and international to there.
There is also a need to increase the garrison to a battalion strength, or if not battalion too two companys. Preferably in high mobility vehicles with AT and MANPADS
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@ Sir Humphrey,
very good article, and I am in agreement with about 90% of what you write, particularly with the assessment about motivations and constraints at the political level. Where I depart from your logic is you not also looking at the reverse side of the centre of gravity (which I agree is MPA). Specifically, MPA only functions as a secure base from which to conduct military operations islands-wide. If MPA cannot do that, then Argentina has opened for itself a window – perhaps a week long, in which to generate enough forces locally to overmatch MPA.
If you take the mindset of stopping MPA from operating, rather than taking on the well-defended area with inadequate force levels, the start of the operation looks considerably less risky, although I’m not foolish enough to think that it would be easy. Significant risk would remain, but if the Argentine Government for some reason decides that international reaction is less painful than not having the islands, risky operations would be easier to sanction.
I’ve never tried to underestimate the enemy. The Argentines have the capacity to generate 100 SF and an “elite” Brigade if they concentrate resources and training on the matter.
Land covertly half of the SF within 10 kms of MPA, infiltrate them into overwatch positions of the runway / taxiways, and the road to MPA from Stanley. ATGW the weapon of choice, with surveillance and range of ideally 6 kms. Do nothing but watch.
Land (also covertly) the other half of the SF within 10 Kms of Stanley airport. Handheld rocket launchers and GPMG the weapons of choice. Infiltrate to assault the narrow neck of land separating Stanley airport and the harbour, and hold the terrain.
Once the assault to seize the airport / harbour has gone noisy, the SF over-watching MPA use ATGW to stop vehicle movement in/out of MPA, and hit any aircraft or helicopters trying to take off.
Not without risk, at all. Would require coordination, good training, and probably a quiet purchase by Argentina of up to date ATGW. But achievable I feel if the political masters accept the degree of risk.
The Brigade is embarked on a civilian ship. MPA cannot react effectively, and is temporarily neutralised. Stanley airport is C-130 capable if the Argentines need it (actually, I don’t think they do, at least not initially). Stanley harbour can berth a cruise ship, and nothing the RIC or TA company have got can stop it. UK ROE and decision making is not going to be able to react fast enough to allow the cruise ship to be sunk in the first 6 hours, which means it could be loitering 100 miles offshore in international waters until the “success” signals are sent by the 2 SF parties. That is if an SSN or the Guard Ship is present. Argentine Int will probably know where the Guard Ship is (it also has responsibilities for St Helena, South Georgia, the South Sandwich islands, and makes port visits to Chile and Uruguay). The SSN may have to be a calculated risk for them.
Once the Brigade is ashore, the UK Garrison commander is in a poor position. He’s got no mobility, he’s lost his air cover, he is outnumbered 3:1, and in effect about 30:1 in terms of formed and trained cohesive units that could take the fight to the Argentines – I don’t credit the ability of the 1400 assorted maintenance, C2 staff and administrative personnel to transform themselves into 14 infantry companies instantly. He is also further weakened if the elite brigade concentrates initially on taking out his ground-based air defence and shrinking his perimeter. If the Argentines got their Int right, the Guard Ship arrives in a few days, but even a T-45 cannot cover all possible approaches to MPA for the 34 Fighting Hawks (range 1700 nm), and is itself somewhat vulnerable to the 2 SSKs that are probably stooging around in the waters that a T-45 would need to be in to provide a dome over MPA which is itself in radar shadow from the sea, obscuring low level approaches.
A second Brigade landing at Stanley within a couple of days of the first brings the local force ratios at MPA to around 9:1. Accompanied by a logistics ship (vehicles, spares ammunition and rations). A full-blown assault on MPA is threatened, but surrender opportunities also offered to the Garrison Commander. He’ll take instructions from Northwood, but 9,000 combat troops supported by close air support against a single infantry company, a TA company who probably got rounded up in Stanley, 1400 others, and no air cover is probably only going to end one way. I don’t think the MoD or the Government have the stomach to order an Alamo style defence, even though I do not doubt the willingness of the servicemen at MPA to follow their orders.
The interesting bit is what happens next. Can we generate enough T-45 and other ships and SSNs to isolate the FI from Argentina which has both ship and air bridge options? Probably not very quickly. What do we do when one of the civilian ships is used to ferry the islanders off the islands to a neutral country (I think Uruguay was used for PW exchange in 82)? If the islands are denuded of inhabitants and the Garrison released from captivity on a dockside in Uruguay (all extremely well-treated, of course), how interested is the rest of the world going to be in the UK’s position? How long can we keep half a dozen ships and SSNs patrolling in the South Atlantic around a pair of islands with 9,000 Argentines and no Brits?
All of that above is
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…last paragraph got cut off. But I was being too long-winded anyway!
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I don’t think that AG will invade again I’m just paranoid, thus the extra company-batalion. A Its been mentioned before but the idea of putting the vikings/warthogs in the FL is a very good one
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@APATS: good to hear that all personnel are small arms qualified. I’m sure we pay more attention to intelligence, but I worry about the attitude from @Sir Humphrey that the UN will protect us. It will do no such thing, and even if it did, it would have no practical impact: the US allowing us to raid their Sidewinder stocks and pilfer their fuel tankers was.
@R L-C: I don’t think the Stanley location is big enough to be expanded to take long haul. But probably more to the point, another airport is another site to defend, when we are short on resources.
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James. a couple of quick points, Stanley harbour cannot berth a cruise liner, they anchor out of the inner harbour and transport tourists in by boat. The training of this Elite Brigade should surely be a massive combat indicator? How may SSK trips to land 100 SF as that is the most feasible method of doing it undetected and then they have to avoid detection on Islands with no strangers and no natural cover. This cruise ship which is not on any cruise schedule and is not expected to berth of following Normal patterns Of Life would also be a huge red flag.
It is not impossible but damm it really requires them to be brilliant and us to be stupid.
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“@APATS: good to hear that all personnel are small arms qualified”
It concerns me that anyone would think otherwise?!
“the US allowing us to raid their Sidewinder stocks and pilfer their fuel tankers was.”
It wasn’t from an overall shortage of missiles. We had well over 3,000 AAMs in service back in those days with stocks being built up to 6,500 by 1990. I do believe we didn’t have many of those Sidewinders because they were spanking new.
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Sigh…
Didn’t the last Falklands War have an Argy corvette that got its’ hull shoved in by an ATGM for getting too close to the shore?
Sir H gave a ratio of 3 is to 1 for fortified areas, but the ratio might be low. In built up areas, the ratio jumps to 7 to 1.
@wf, you claim that your plan does not strain credibility, but the reason for my C&C comment is that it DOES strain credibility to an extreme extent and reads more like a fairytale than a coherent ops plan.
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@ Sir Humphrey
Very nice article maybe you should get it published in a newspaper, or private eye. Really enjoyable. I think I agree with everything you say. But I always want the be a diplomatic “child” and through the rattles out of the pram etc. I wish their was something more substantial we could do to persuade Brazil and other MERCOSUR members to not be so unwilling to stand up to Argentine.
On another note, is it not possible to fly to Punta Arenas without going into Argentine territory? remove the Argentines from the ounce a week flight diktat.
Would their be any savings if we built a base in Namibia (+ alliance, treaties & “ties”) as this would remove the south american/ascension dependency we have?
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@APATS: no, it requires us to be complacent. I imagine SF operating around Stanley would be likely to be detected, although the AR Marines Commando Company was not in 82 until they hit Moody Brook. But near to Mare Harbour…there is precious little there, let alone people wandering late at night
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@ Phil
It isn’t that long back that a RN NE could pass in with not completing the small arms handling qual. Of course there is a shooting on a range and then there is shooting in combat.
And yes those Sidewinders were the latest and greatest versions.
@ James
The Argentines have their own ATGW called the Mathogo.
When I read your Falklands stuff it always makes me think the FIDF are under gunned and for all there quads etc. are effectively immobile.
How well trained are RE in infantry tactics?
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“It isn’t that long back that a RN NE could pass in with not completing the small arms handling qual”
Oh dear. I can understand not every sailor needs to be current on small arms but I’m glad they changed that as its a basic skill any serviceman should have. I also support the return of Cutlass Drill.
“How well trained are RE in infantry tactics?”
They’ll be pretty good. Not infantry, but a very solid force in defence (especially since they cna throw up their own obstacles!).
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‘Didn’t the last Falklands War have an Argy corvette that got its’ hull shoved in by an ATGM for getting too close to the shore?’
Yes a milan round hit one of the arse end of one the argie ships.
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“How well trained are RE in infantry tactics?”
That will be soldier first, combat engineer second, tradesman third, all round love god and and champion euchre player, probably about the rest of the numbers there are
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@WF
The other airport at Stanley is just to take civilian flight away from MPA, the google satellite map show there is around 2km to play around with at Stanley airport and there is only one road that connects the airport to Stanley and it goes through a very narrow land-bridge, easy to regulate the flow of traffic and warn MPA and thus England. At around three flights a week you only need one runway, if its built s that it can be destroyed easily that would be an added bonus.
sorry about any spelling errors
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“all round love god and and champion euchre player”
Steady!
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I was going to say champion piss drinker but thought I might upset people 🙂
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Think, for a moment, about the vast mass of shipping we needed in 1982 to get 3 Cdo ashore and supplied, plus all the extra we needed to move 5 Brigade and then deploy them using the first lot of assets.
That would be 2 cruise liners (Canberra and Qe2), 2 LPDs (Fearless and Intrepid), a big passenger Ro-Ro (Norland) and several other trucker Ro-Ros (Elk, Baltic Ferry, Europic Ferry etc), 4 LSLs (the Galahads) (this subunit in itself, on its alone-i-o, is 4x Argentina’s total amphibious shipping), a couple of big RFAs (Fort Austin, Tidespring, Stromness) in use to carry troops and stores, two containerships (because we had an oops with the first one) plus the RFA tankers and store ships supporting the other ships logistically.
They wouldn’t need as many tankers and they wouldn’t need a repair ship or tugs or a tankerful of fresh water or an aviation forward repair ship. But they would still need a vast amount of specialised shipping that they don’t have, can’t build, and can’t afford to buy. I haven’t even started on the support helicopters or landing craft.
I’m pretty sure the massive shipbuilding programme required to support a division-sized amphibious operation would be a huge strategic indicator, as well as being ludicrously beyond Argentina’s budget.
We have 3 big “LSD(A)” (the Bays – any other navy would call them LPDs), 2 modern LPDs, a modern LPH, 4 big Ro-Ros (the Points)…and we think it would be only just enough to embark our amphibious forces and all their stuff.
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@Alex
Like your diplomatic “oops with the first one.” You’re a born diplomat. 🙂
And your post kind of brings to light what was lacking in wf’s war plans, a sense of scale and the degree of logistical burden a war of occupation of that size needs. Not just 8 men carrying MANPADs.
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@Topman: that was the Guerrico, in South Georgia. It was a Carl Gustav recoiless rifle, which scored three hits, plus rather a lot of small arms fire. Unfortunately, the round that hit the Exocet launcher failed to detonate 😦
@Alex: Argentina doesn’t need to mount a standard amphibious assault, just lift cargo from one port to another. It has a reasonable amount of shipping for this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Argentina#Merchant_marine
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@wf
Think Topman got the right incident, I did remember the report as a Milan too.
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@Observer: in the FIW we needed to land effectively a full division with stores, over the beach, move over 100’s of km, to fight a break in battle, and fixed wing air transport wasn’t a factor. There’s only going to be one break in battle here, on MPA, which is 8km from the harbour where the ships would unload. Furthermore, our supply line extends 8000 miles, whereas AR has to contend with only 400. The level of shipping required is going to be vastly less
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Carl Gutav. Don’t think there was a Milan down there. They were relatively new at the time.
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@wf
…. in shipping containers???
Stacked deep in without a way to extract necessary equipment fast???
Ouch… heaven help you if you loaded your tanks 1st in. It’ll be the last out.
wf, you have interesting individual ideas, but they just don’t mesh well into a coherent ops plan.
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@ wf, I’m fairly sure a ship in the intial invasion got hit by rm party.
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Thinking about I think it was a 66mm rocket disposable jobbie.
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I also wonder if the RN has the capacity to engage in a Cod War style confrontation in the South Atlantic.
The Brown’s outgun T45 if it comes to a less than war, argie-bargie, shot across the bows, confrontation.
That is the key to all this for the Argentines keeping just this side of the line.
@ Phil
The last time I mentioned the cutlass here in passing as a bit of colour one of our serving RN guys here got all offended.
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@Topman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grytviken
Carl Gustav 🙂
@Observer: I suggested RO-RO for the initial assault to speed unloading. There’s a limit for how long any group of SF, even supported by parachute drops, can deny the use of an airfield against a competent infantry unit, certainly no longer than 24 hours. But that is all that would be required
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@ Topman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grytviken
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@ Topman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Mills_(Royal_Marines_officer)
The RM officer who made the “eyes water” comment.
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“The Brown’s outgun T45”
Not sure what a Brown is but the T45 has 13 gun mounts. 1 4.5, 2 Phalanx, 2 30mm mounting, 2 miniguns and 6 GPMGs.
Seems enough to be getting on with gun wise.
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“But they would still need a vast amount of specialised shipping that they don’t have, can’t build, and can’t afford to buy.”
They are 300 miles away from home instead of 13.000 miles away, as they like to remind us.
If they buy the Endurances that Singapore is to sell, or the second Foundre LPD when France retires it and sells it off, (they nearly acquired the first one but they could not beat Chile who had the money ready, won’t happen again) they arguably have what they need and more.
3rd Commando had 11.000 men to face.
They have 1000/1500, of which the true fighting core is a single british army Company which can count on 2 civilian sea kings and SAR helos for mobility and are protected by 3 + 1reserve fighter jets with little to no Air to Ground attack capability. Worse, the air-to-air refuelling and cargo situation is such that the RAF is realistically able to either sell down more fighters OR send troops. Both can’t be done at the same time, even if the Voyager will improve the situation significantly once it has replaced the current tankers.
Excuse me if my reserves continue to stand.
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@ APATS,
good spot on Stanley Harbour. A quick Google gets this http://www.falklandislands.com/assets/documents/2011-harbour-info-basic.pdf which seems to be up to date and official. You’ve got 300 metres of berthing for vessels that draw less than 6.5 metres, and sheltered deep water anchorage 200 metres to the north of the airfield peninsula, for which some form of ship to shore relay would be needed. I don’t think that would be insurmountable for them to solve.
2 SSKs can land 48 men covertly. A couple of possibilities exist for the other SF group: dropped off covertly by a boat that is legitimately going into Stanley half an hour before it docks, or (not my first thought – riskier) straight onto the jetty.
“Elite” Brigade training may not be such a combat indicator as you think – Armies do it all of the time. A public announcement of an Army reorganisation a year or so before, creation of a new all-Regular Mountain Brigade that does exercises in the Andes, and deploys to an from a base in the far north of Argentina be chartered ferry, several such instances of these exercises, all routine stuff…
Their biggest problem – or rather the one thing they have to get right – is surprise. As I have said above, this would not be an easy or risk-free operation. But, assuming the political masters are prepared to prepared to re-invade the islands (and I fully agree with Sir Humphrey on that being a very long shot), I think it would be wise to assume that they have the military capacity to get 100 SF ashore covertly, particularly at some isolated spot 10 kms from Stanley or MPA.
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@wf
“There’s a limit for how long any group of SF, even supported by parachute drops, can deny the use of an airfield against a competent infantry unit, certainly no longer than 24 hours. But that is all that would be required”
I estimate 2 hours. Which is about the time needed to form hunter-killer teams in section size and go hunting. Remember, if you’re running or in a firefight, you’re not going to be casually using a MANPAD while ground troops shoot at you. Those things tend to have a set up time and need exposure to fire. Backblast, you know.
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@ Phil
Brown’s has,
1x Oto Melara 5 inch dual purpose gun
8x Breda/Bofors 40 mm/70 anti-aircraft guns (4x twin)
plus small arms mounts (they have lots of M60 and .50cals too) all you need is a welder and some steel
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Another thing about these SF teams. You can’t just run here, there, and everywhere on the Falklands because some fools have scattered lots of mines about the place. Can’t remember who it was……
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Both Carl Gustav and 66mm.
http://www.britains-smallwars.com/Falklands/South-Georgia.html
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@x
LOL seriously good one there mate!
If it came to just shooting cross the bows though, then does it matter if he has 8 guns or 80? They’re not firing for effect.
Though in war, in a ship gun to gun battle, the ship that wins… is the one who fires the torpedo. :p No such thing as “cheating” in war.
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X,
see page 16 of the link I posted at 1904. Not insurmountable.
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@Observer
Funny you should say that. Late in the Falklands conflict the Argentines were adapting the Pucara to carry an air-lauched anti-ship torpedo – the US Mk 13 IIRC. The war ending ended the project.
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Observer,
you’ve got a single infantry company. Pick the right time of day and you can guarantee many will be inside MPA, or if they are deployed on a field firing exercise too far away to influence the situation. Given surprise, and the mental shock that follows, the company commander is unlikely to have enough situational awareness of the wider defence area around MPA to know where to send his section sized patrols. A section size patrol coming close to a 4 man SF team is not going to have an advantage. All they know is that a taxiing Typhoon went “bang”, and their platoon on QRF was tasked to mount some clearance patrols. They are not going to fire first, because it may have gone “bang” for a maintenance-related reason, and the figure they may see in their NVG could be a shepherd or farmer.
It’s going to take more than 2 hours to sort out what is happening, get the ROE changed, etc. Achieving real surprise gives the Argentines 24 hours realistically, before the Garrison has enough local SA, political clearance to get all aggressive, and in the intervening period a Brigade landed from a ferry.
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Great post and lot’s of the usual what-if scenarios which makes an entertaining read.
My view is that by all this we miss the most likely scenario; that is the slow clever take over by the use of engineered events and the accumulation of broader international support. Wasn’t the start of the 82 war the arrest of “scrap merchants” on South Georgia after they raised the Argentinian flag?
Something to invoke an over reaction by British forces would be a classic start.
Also, the only country in the world which could take and keep the islands by force is the US. Maybe that is the Argies
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@James: Germany’s primary trading partner in 1939 was France. The Soviet Union would have starved if they actually had kicked off WWIII. Cristina doubtless has a time horizon of the next election. If she’s desperate enough, and God knows the country is in shit order, she’ll do it. Banning the sale of newsprint to opposition newspapers is desperation in my book.
@Observer: section sized hunter killer teams? Against section sized SF groups, probably around half their number? I’m sure British army infantry units are better than AR, but they aren’t that much better. And what happened to mutual support? It’s going to take a bit longer than 2 hours, particularly since the rest of the base are going to have to be organised to backfill the RIC in the bunkers. The biggest help the RIC could have would be Javelin’s and mortars for smoke.
@x: the minefields are being cleared. I would have thought Mare Habour MPA was largely cleared in 84 when they were building MPA
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WF
“Four hours after this, AR warships are disgorging troops and vehicles that were on “exercise” off Patagonia”
What happens if, instead of your scenario occuring, the UKs South Atlantic Astute had been shadowing the wargames?
Now, the fleet might not be sent to Davey Jones Locker when the first tiffie is hit, but it bloody will be long before it starts pouring men and materiel onto The Islands….
Of course, there may not be a South Atlantic Astute, but if there is, the greater portion of the Argentine Army and Navy dies in the space of 20 minutes.
Its an impossible risk, and the more Argentina pushes, the more likely the participation of one.
Its not like they can Yom Kipurr us, its nothing for us to up the Astute order to allow a Falklands Guard Submarine and base a combined arms battle group into position for the foreseeable future.
A Scimitar Troop and a couple of Fire Support Platoons in Spartans, and suddenly, it looks rather suicidal.
They cant wear us down, they can only hope to suprise us, and thats both unlikely to work and be devestating if it doesnt
Personaly, I think their best bet is landing some heavy artilery pieces and hoping they can shell us out.
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*damn phone* … Also, the only country in the world which could take and keep the islands by force is the US. Maybe that is the Argies Plan B.
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@ wf
Yes I know………………..
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@James
That scenario has so many assumptions that it belongs in Heaven.
1) Mental Shock… you’re depending on this??
2) Lack of situational awareness? Try the direction the missile was fired from…
3) A section cannot outmatch 4 men? Possible, but if forced into a gunfight, they’re not interdicting the airfield.
4) “because it may have gone “bang” for a maintenance-related reason” Yes, I commonly do maintainance with surface to air missiles….
Seriously, you’re postulating criminal levels of incompetence and willful ignorence on a very large chunk of people. Something that I have severe doubts that will happen.
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@wf
Right tool for right job. Search and destroy needs dispersal, not concentration. You concentrate only AFTER you localised the enemy. Pin them down and wait for your other teams to join you to get critical mass for the push.
I doubt anyone is stupid enough to draft people doing HK sweeps to do RIC, they have dedicated firefighting staff for that.
As I said, your scenario is too far fetched to be even remotely plausably. Think Sir H described it as “Death Star” impausable? He’s right on that.
Jame’s sceanrio is slightly more possible though fraught with incredible risk. You have to have all the cards fall in place all in the right order or it’ll collapse. Still possible, just very, very difficult.
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@ Observer re argie bargie
The point I am trying to make is a salvo fired as a checking action or as a calculated response could seriously harm a ship like T45. I am not talking about a surface action per se. Imagine 2 ships steaming close together neither wanting to give way. One contact too many. And one of the captains fears for his ship and fires. Not enough to go to war over. But played out in front of TV news crew with some spin. T45 (SeaViper to one side) isn’t that well armed. The RN chaps here would argue quite rightly that they have no need to be. But in a less than war situation where measure responses are needed a gun is more use. It is willy waving. As well as the Brownes the Argentines have the Esporas which also just about outgun T45. What if Whitehall orders T45 or T23 to steam away from the harassment; that could be spinned as running away.
It works even better if the Argentine vessel is unarmed. What if the Argentines decide to start issuing their own fishing licences for Falklands waters? Sending I don’t know their “fisheries officers” out in tugs or fishing boats. Are we going to sink these? No. What if they do this with say 10 vessels? Does Clyde and APT(S) chase all of them? They can’t. It is very easy for the Argentines to engineer a situation at sea that isn’t clear cut that could have a small RN running around itself.
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@Observer: imagine this. You are the company commander, and all your company are on stag or in bed, in MPA (best case). Alert is called, 2 Typhoon’s on a night patrol have blown up. You know AR has TOW and RBS70, so we are looking at up to 6km radius. You will need to:-
– organise local defense, there are likely more sneaky beaky sorts on the way. You need to get the bunkers manned and the plans tied in. I’d say 2 hour minumum
– simultaneous with this, you need to be planning clearance patrols. You may have been lucky and seen the launching points, you may have to draw a circle.
– you then mount up to get rid of the awkward ones. It’s rough terrain, so at patrol pace, you are covering maybe 2k an hour, and you have a lot of terrain to clear. If you are brave, you could mount up in Land Rover’s and see if that spooks someone into firing. You potentially have 100+ sq km to clear. Obviously, the majority of that will be unsuitable, but clearing 20 with an infantry company will take 24 hours, assuming no downtime, no major engagements.
Of course, if a company of paratroopers lands 6 km away, your clearance operation will cease instantly.
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@ Observer
This sort of happening………
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@ James
Do you think the Argentines know where they planted mines in ’82?
And again I was joking about the minefields.
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Observer,
we may agree to differ, but even if you are right, we still have concurrent events happening that make it difficult for a small force to react effectively to events even if 100% accurately reported. Put yourself in the position of the J3 Current Ops cell in MPA:
Telephone reports that access to the airfield and harbour in Stanley has been denied across a narrow isthmus.
Credible reports from the Stanley harbourmaster that he has an unidentified large radar contact 20 nautical miles out which does not respond to radio interrogation.
30 miles distance between MPA and Stanley. QRF of a single platoon on 15 minutes notice to move from MPA. The TA company in Stanley asleep in their beds.
Split the forces to react to 2, possibly 3 separate events? Concentrate on MPA, realising that MPA is the linchpin that keeps the flag flying? Or react to events in Stanley by ordering the QRF up the road as fast as possible? Probably the latter. MPA may be the linchpin, but you cannot ignore events in Stanley.
Off they go. The next report is that the leading helicopter got taken out while loading the QRF on the taxiway at MPA, and a Typhoon got hit by another missile in the HAS. Now what? Local clearance patrols or send more troops to Stanley via vehicles leaving from the back gate? The radar contact from the harbour master is now only 10 miles out. You don’t want to leave MPA undefended, but equally not reacting to events in Stanley is going to allow that large radar contact to get into the harbour and you don’t know what is onboard.
Can you conduct clearance patrols around MPA out to 6 Kms with an understrength infantry company in enough time to find, fight and kill 50 SF, and then redeploy your company to Stanley in enough time to attack and take out 50 SF holding a narrow isthmus, and then close with and destroy a regular Brigade that has landed unmolested? I think not, particularly as MPA itself seems to be under attack with ATGW. The 1400 non-infantry Garrison reacted very well and are in defensive positions, which is where you want them to be, but they don’t have the weapons or the surveillance equipment to react to ATGW coming in at irregular intervals from 6 Kms out and that seem to be concentrating on anything moving in or out of MPA, and in particular any aircraft or helicopter movement.
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Typhoons randomly blowing up?!
Have the Argies developed teleportation? Is there a teleportation gap?!
Seriously. A sneak attack with a weak armed forces when a large chunk of intelligence machinery is literally straining to hear anything untoward happening AT ALL? I know one shouldn’t under estimate ones enemy, but Christ, there needs to be some realistic and reasonable assumptions!
If it was the US across the water then it’s conceivable Typhoons would randomly explode and screaming men would descend on MPA. But it isn’t.
Reality pills. I prescribe many to be taken. With water.
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What man portable ATGW’s are on the open market that can go to 6km
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@TD: Kornet goes to 5. RBS70 goes to 5 (which AR already have)
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I think it would be wise to assume that they have the military capacity to get 100 SF ashore covertly, particularly at some isolated spot 10 kms from Stanley or MPA.
I think everyone assumes that, in fact it sounds like the defence plan is designed to deal with just that.
They are 300 miles away from home instead of 13.000 miles away, as they like to remind us.
True, but they have to count on losing the use of the sea to SSN as soon as the balloon goes up, and plan for not necessarily taking the airfield quickly, or taking it after it was blown up or otherwise denied, and therefore they need to bring their 60 days’ war maintenance reserve or whatever in the first flight of ships.
Also, Ro-Ro is only easy to offload if there’s a functional, compatible Ro-Ro terminal that’s cooperating. (i.e. some troublesome person hasn’t blown it up or sabotaged the linkspan hydraulics) The RN hoped to be able to sail landing craft up to Norland’s stern door and roll vehicles straight from the car deck into the LCU, but it’s too high. Fortunately she also has a side entrance (I remember looking up at it from the quayside in Hull as a kid) with different geometry. Is there even a Ro-Ro terminal on the islands?
If not you’d have to try to lower the bow door onto the open wharf (hoping it fits) by manoeuvring the ship end-on in the harbour without hitting a rock at the far end. As for a cruise ship, well, what’s the offload plan? The lifeboats? The last time we tried that was Cape Helles and the Aussies still haven’t forgiven us.
Actually, Helles is a case in point – you can’t just chuck together an amphibious operation, if you do it goes badly wrong and quick, and a relatively tiny Turkish force (about a division spread around the whole peninsula) was able to contain the landing well away from their objectives, with much loss of life on our part.
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@TD: you can switch off RBS70 proximity fusing too, and with a shaped charge warhead, it’s quite useful against ground targets
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Kornet is 30kg a piece, how many of them can they hump up the mountain without using vehicles?
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@ TD,
I had MAPATS in mind. Range “up to” 5,000 metres, but some sources declare 6,000 metres for the upgraded version the Estonians bought. That’s why I originally said ideally a 6 km range. 5 km for the original version is still giving the MPA defenders a real headache though. Israeli developed, in service with Chile, Venezuela, Estonia and Ecuador. I imagine that given enough folding hush money Argentina could lay its’ hands on 12 launchers and 48 missiles, with enough missiles for pre-operational training.
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I think another company wouldn’t go amiss. Further I have queried before here what vehicles the infantry company has down there.
And I do think the FIDF isn’t very well armed. I know we can argue the Argentines won’t get close. So if we can argue that why have the FIDF? Is it a sop? What do they demonstrate? 82 was lost because of the Argentine’s had overwhelming manpower. But what would have happened if the RM had gone to the right beach with MILAN and .50cal to hand? The Argentine nose would have been even bloodier. The FIDF need to demonstrate to the Argentine government that they have the weapons (Javelin) to damage ships and destroy vehicles. They need to show they can hurt anything coming up the beach. (And they need proper vehicles too.) They are a dedicated bunch and need to be treated as such.
I think Typhoon only saves the Argentine air force from deploying. Why deploy if you are going to get shot down. And would Typhoon’s limited air-to-ground capability sway a ground fight. Considering how close the fighting will be to Stanley or MPA or Mare Harbour is a Paveway or 1000lb dumb bomb suitable ordnanace? Again the Argentines aren’t going to land so need to worry. Then again during the 82 invasion the Argentines didn’t use one FJ so. Oh yes! The cannon! I forgot the cannon. I wonder if the Chinese will sell the Argentines some MANPADS? I should imagine those engines look pretty hot to an infra-red sensor. Lastly has Typhoon any real anti-ship capability? If not unless there is an SSN down south or T23 with Harpoon things seem pretty open.
I am depressed again about this now. 🙂
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Phil,
“randomly blowing up” is not what is suggested. It rather describes the reaction of the control tower staff when a Typhoon parked on the hard-standing suddenly explodes. Unless someone was looking at it directly, the missile efflux would probably go un-noticed. Even if someone was looking directly at it, putting the facts together is going to take a few moments.
Not teleportation. Now that is silly!
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@ Phil re Brown’s
This is what I am on about,
Notice the two turrets in B position. Those are twin 40mm’s. There is another pair back in Y position. This is one with both guns firings,
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@James
Not as silly as your sudden appearence of 100 men. That’s a company’s worth of trooplift. And a covert insertion. You ever tried squeezing 100 men on a sub which I think only carries half that crew? Someone’s going to be sleeping in the torpedo tubes. And ATGMs added in too. Talk is cheap, go find some covert transport to insert 100 men. Now THAT is hard.
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@Observer: 100 is quite a few. But 30 would do just as well
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Did some checking. The T-1700 class has a complement of 26. You’re squeezing 4x it’s normal complement + support weapons + zodiacs in. Good luck.
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@wf
Then I’ll send 600 men on the sweep. Duh…
There is more than enough men to keep the airfield open from an SF attack, and you CANNOT fire ATGMs if you have to constantly keep displacing to avoid contact.
Seriously, most of the situations you come up with is really scaremongering and pretty low grade ones at that.
2 hours to keep the airfield closed is the most likely result before being forced out of position. 4 is the most extreme end I can envision. Then the planes go up to do air recce and things go to hell in a handbasket for the people in passenger liners, cargo ships and 747s.
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@Observer: let’s hope Faith, Hope and Charity survive the opening salvo 🙂
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Is this faith hope and charity thing actually real or just some bollox you read on the net, like the word phoon or ghanners!!!!
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I am telexing Chris B now. I have this great idea to fit sheep and penguins with webcams. See how you like them apples Christina!!!!!!1
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@ Observer,
I did say 2 SSKs (and they have 3) could land 48, which is what they declare. Another 50 could come from another covert means.
I think you and I are thinking on 2 separate tracks. As someone pointed out above, the Argentines have a track record of being “unconventional”, landing military people on South Georgia disguised as scrap metal workers. Do you really want to assume that if they are desperate enough to try to retake the FI, they might not again resort to unconventional approaches?
I am sure that if the best brains in Argentina’s defence department put their heads together, they could get 100 SF ashore covertly in two remote locations if they wanted. It does not really matter what analysis of Janes or even Wikipedia reveals. Janes does not consider deliberately underhand deception.
A 5 kilometre radius circle around MPA has an area of nearly 79 square kilometres. Actually more, because it is 5 kilometres from the outer wire of MPA, so probably over 120 square kilometres. That is a lot of ground for a 140 man infantry company to search, in a confused situation with competing calls for the force to be split into several tasks, probably at night, on foot (there are no roads accessing all parts of that terrain), looking for an unknown number of SF patrols who are alert, hiding, and in possession of equal or better STA than a regular British infantry company. If you think you can achieve that in less than 4 hours then you should name your price to the MoD and seek permanent employment in the FI. A couple of million pounds a month would be cheap for a man of your capacity, and I’m sure we’d happily pay it.
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Or they could make multiple trips and lay up before moving off
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Would the RIC have some of those nifty hand-launched drones?
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@TD: Faith, Hope and Charity are the names of the Gladiator’s from the original 1435 Flight that garrisoned Malta. The RAF named the current aircraft in the same manner (the 4th being called Desperation)
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@Observer, @James. Many large fishing vessels call at Stanley during the year. Quite normal for them to sail south of Stanley, since the main fishing grounds are that way
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@ Observer
Just in case you didn’t know James was part of a staff team working on defence plans for the Falklands.
It cannot be confirmed or denied whether he did this wearing red trousers either openly or by other covert means.
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‘Is this faith hope and charity thing actually real or just some bollox you read on the net, like the word phoon or ghanners!!!!’
It’s a link to 1435 flight when they were in Malta during WW2 they only exsisted as a flight for a few months. The nicknames for the a/c there given to them by their groundcrew.
More of a spotter or unofficial thing. All 4 are opertional, the rumour that one is down there as a spare is a myth, same when the F3 were down their and no doubt when the Phantoms were there.
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X,
red long johns. Had to be. It was winter and therefore King Billy, and I believe I was the only cavalryman on the islands at the time. You can’t take too many chances in a joint staff mess. Too many RN types who would laugh (despite being very proud of their floaty little boat that was at the time considerably elsewhere and thus made one of my main points), and other riff RAF.
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Its probably worth noting that Argentine SSK capability is hugely limited, and as such they would struggle to put 100 people out on a TR1700. Additionally, you have to consider where one can safely land in the region – the beaches aren’t all ideal for discretely parking a mid sized SSK in that area – which narrows down your landing points.
I would also suggest that the UK has had 30 years to make some very searching ground defence plans, and wider defence plans. Its probably fair to note that the defensive forces located there reflect the nature of the threat – if the threat changes, then the UK forces will change over time.
My big complaint about Falkland ‘what ifs’ is that they assume major posture changes on the part of the Argentines, without allowing any such assumption on the part of the UK. People seem to have decided that the UK will sit there happy and dumb until planes start blowing up left right and centre. This is probably a dangerous assumption to make!
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@ James
Joint staff mess? Oh you mean the Wardroom! For a moment there I thought you were eating with your horses.
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@ Sir Humphrey,
your points are well made, and taken. Given what you have revealed of your own experience, I place credence in what you choose to put onto the internet. Having myself been the J3 Ops lead for an OPEVAL-type inspection / seminar for a fortnight about 10 years ago, there are many things I would not place onto the internet, and indeed it was 10 years ago, and much changes.
And yet…. There is always the unexpected. Our biggest strategic emphasis should be on pre-warning. Intelligence routinely collected, and diligently analysed. The impressions of our diplomatic mission to Buenos Aires. Our Defence Attaché in BA having an uncommon curiosity, and a close link to SIS.
If we ever let them spring a strategic surprise on us, we do not have the capacity to effectively resist a well-executed coup de main operation. I posit above that 100 SF in 2 groups could deny us freedom of reaction or manoeuvre, and if they combine that with a well-drilled Brigade coming ashore then we have lost the islands. In your original piece you talk about we the 2 sides have NOW, and in our case we don’t have an amphibious landing force that 8 weeks later can come ashore. They will have learned their lessons from 1982, chiefly put enough troops ashore to force us to mount an impossible maritime operation that could land a 3:1 numbers superiority. Secondary lessons will have been learned about logistics and air support.
We’ve got a fantastic facility in MPA, but if we lost it to them, they’d then have a fantastic facility to keep us at arm’s length. Couple that with some political decisions about treating UK PWs and the islanders with grace and respect, but still firmly off-shoring the islanders to Uruguay with generous compensation, and we’ve got an uphill battle to even get the world’s ear in the UN debating chamber, far less launch another Task Force.
So it all comes down to what Argentine cunning can achieve against British intelligence and vigilance in those first crucial days.
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X,
I’m not even going to try to recall 1986 and my financially ruinous decision to take 1 and 1/4 shares in a pair of polo ponies. Let’s just say that they were in luxury eating hay, and the vet was in luxury on the bills I paid, and Mastercard were regular correspondents with me, normally using red ink. Eating with the ponies was about where I got to before deciding that field hockey was cheap enough, and of course the rugby in the winter.
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James
I suspect that we could both argue in more depth, from different sides of the J shack, but that neither of us is able to do so!
My own view is simple – the aim of the MPA complex is to ensure we don’t lose the islands again. I have seen nothing to suggest that Argentina could put together an operation of this complexity with its current ORBAT, or that it could do so without setting off I&W alarms from here to DC.
I would also suggest that our landing force NOW is infinitely more capable than that of 82, and also that the argentines force is far less capable.
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@Sir Humphrey: I’m not assuming any posture changes, merely an AR political decision to act. This is not a minor matter, but such decisions were taken last time arguably as a condition for naval support for the promotion of Galtieri to the presidency. On such unrelated matters, the world sometimes turns.
AR has a amphibious commando group (they spearheaded the invasion last time), a parachute brigade, RO-RO vessels, TOW and RBS70 missiles. It doesn’t have a large submarine force, but it’s large enough to deploy a platoon. Nothing has changed, for AR.
What has changed is that we have decomissioned all of our carrier air for the next decade. To be accurate, the GR9 was not an air defence aircraft, the F/A2 was, but perceptions count. Now a coup de main looks attractive because, if it succeeds, there is no comeback: we’ve lost. And, after Basra, the mantra of “the British never give up, they just come back stronger” has lost it’s force.
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“I would also suggest that our landing force NOW is infinitely more capable than that of 82, and also that the argentines force is far less capable”. Agreed! But it will make no difference if there’s no air cover for them
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Whether Argentina could take the Islands is less relevant than whether they could do so at an acceptable cost – diplomatic, financial, and mortal costs.
It’s all very well dreaming up theoretical scenarios for an Argentinian coup de main, but these are all high risk adventures; and what no one putting forward these ideas has done so far, is to suggest a compelling reason for Argentina to take such risky action.
Also, folks seem to assume an unwritten rule that the UK cannot begin to reinforce the garrison prior to Typhoons exploding. Britain can respond at any time to any diplomatic or intelligence event, and that leaves big unknowns for an invading force – the SF troop that arrived last week, or the Javelin platoon arriving next week, can do so without fanfare and without Argentinian knowledge and can provide an unexpected spanner in the works for any small Argentinian vanguard.
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This is my first reply to a post, although I have been visiting the site for about a year now. So please be gentle!
Sir H’s is well thought out and well presented. However a few thought’s:
The T45 has no Harpoon.
Typhoon has no Anti-Ship capability. (Mind you, the UK has no fast-air Anti-Ship Missile capability at all.)
The UK has no Maritime Patrol aircraft.
A couple of months ago a Russian Carrier Group popped up off the coast of Scotland, without anyone apparantly noticing! Until it dropped anchor!
So, a surprise Sea Landing is not out of the question. As long as the Argentine Navy can keep the T45 at arms length. They could land where they wanted. Could 4 Typhoon’s stop an Amphibious Landing, I doubt it. Typhoon is good but not that good. If they could use the runway that is.
How long the garrison could hold out for is open to question. As I dont know how well armed they are. And I dont think we should be speculating on it either.
Now we all know that Fact is Stranger than Fiction. I have to admit, I am a fan of Tom Clancy. One of his first books was called RED STORM RISING, Basically the book is about the Cold War going Hot. Now, one of the storylines of the book is the fall of Iceland. And the use of a Ro-Ro ship, carrying Hovercraft and Russian Paratroopers to seize the Airfields there. Now, please do not think that I am a fantasist. But if someone in the Argentine Military has also read the same book, and just happens to think, ‘now thats a good idea’..
Now I know it is a fictional book. However in 1994, Tom Clancey published the Jack Ryan book- Debt of Honour. That book ends with a 747 delibratly flown into Capitol Hill Building wiping out the US Government. On Sept 11th 2001, whilst watching that days terrible events playout, I thought of Clancey’s Novel as Fiction became Fact in front of my eye’s.
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There is a principle in British risk management. ALARP. You reduce the risk As Low As Reasonably Practical. Our posture is essentially based on the ALARP principle. Given the threat, now existing, the risk is manageable. As Sir H has pointed out, our posture down there is not set in stone. If the threat increases things can change.
There is not going to be a bolt from the blue. In the history of modern warfare there has rarely been a true bolt from the blue. We are lucky in that the Argentine objectives are very clear, their means of attaining them are very clear. There is little scope for ambiguity or deception and this is coupled with a hair trigger on the reinforcement option. I’d guarantee that there is a book somewhere with a list of things the Argies simply HAVE to do to pull off an invasion. And we’ll be watching those things VERY closely.
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@ Sir Humphrey,
we could agree on you aim for MPA, but I’d counter-point that our force levels are inadequate to defeat a well-handled SF coup de main operation. MPA’s strength is also a weakness.
Leaving aside another good debate about the wisdom of Argentina trying it on again (with which I agree on your initial article, but countries often elect bonkers Presidents), the question is really does Argentina have the capacity to train up a relatively small number of men to effect such an operation? I think it does, and to land them covertly, whether it be by SSK, fishing trawler, cargo ship in mock distress after an engine fire, or whatever else they can come up with. OPSEC is vital for about 200 people who would have to know. Not for the elite Brigade conducting their 4th exercise in a year in Patagonia and for the 4th time recovering to home base on a ferry. They can be briefed on the mission after departing port. Their mission is simple: disembark in good order from a jetty onto already seized terrain, then go GBAD hunting in company groups and avoid direct fire contact with the pinned down MPA defenders.
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Welcome to TD Simon
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@ Sir Humphrey,
in addition to the need for Int vigilance, I’d also argue (and did) for Spearhead workup training to also include battalion deployments to the FI for field firing, perhaps for 3 weeks every 4 months and if possible at slightly random intervals, and for publicised port visits to Mare Harbour by SSNs in addition to the routine presence of the Guard Ship which should stop fraternal port visits to other places that leak instantly and well in advance. Keep the buggers in BA guessing.
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Couple of points that spring to mind.
Firstly, we have some of the best SF in the world. I am sure that they have come up with great ideas how they would take the FI, and passed them on for those defending them to think about.
Secondly, I would imagine that whenever one of our SSNs is down south they go looking for the Argentinian subs, follow them about, record their signatures and operational styles. It would be very embarrassing if (possibly due to intelligence, possibly by luck) our SSN was following the Argentinian sub that was landing the SF. If playing nice they could alert the MOD (can the SSNs communicate whilst still tracking?), get the reinforcements on the way unannounced, and have the locals round up the bad guys and parade them and their ATGWs before the flown in press – very embarrasing indeed.
If we were particularly grumpy we could sink the Argentinian sub, and never own up. Either after rounding up the SF (“we have no idea how they got there”) or before/during – the Argentinians are hardly going to complain publicly that a sub full of SF has disappeared off the coast of the FI….
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@Phil: I can see ways of improving things, but given that warnings are likely to be ignored and the consequences of failure so comprehensive, I would like see the following.
– 3 C-RAM systems to detect and shoot down ATGM/SAM. Could replace some Rapier
– smoke pots, with infrared screening smoke, positioned around the base to screen movement
– a troop of MLRS to shower any landing with fire
– 2 more Typhoon, with all 6 cleared to fire an antiship missile. The Norwegian NSM would seem to be suited to the cluttered FI environment
– expansion of the Army garrison to a battalion so as to give commanders options
– re-activate some Sea Harriers, or beg some AV8Bplus from the USMC.
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and if they combine that with a well-drilled Brigade coming ashore
from what shipping, in what landing craft or helis?
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We’ve got UOR-acquired C-RAM in Afghanistan that won’t have a job after 2014. I have no idea if MPA has C-RAM, but it does have surrounding terrain with high spots that is eminently suitable for C-RAM, and a nearby population of uniformed spanner wranglers that could no doubt do the machine-fettling C-RAM needs.
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As you know, my suggestion for an improvement is deploying CVR(T). Let’em see the trousers.
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Warnings are not going to be ignored. Losing them would be like Tobruk and Singapore rolled into one. It’s a Government Ending Event. And like I said, there’s little scope for ambiguity in reality when it comes to interpreting Argentine actions. And considering all we have to do is send SLE on ‘exercise’ to almost certainly thwart their plans it’s not something I am going to lose sleep over.
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Alex,
if you control a reasonable port with 300m of berthing for <6.5m draft ships, and an anchorage for ships of any draft less than 200 metres from the coastline you are trying to get onto, without being flippant at all (and my remarks on this topic as ever reflect that risk exists), how difficult is it in comparison with what they already achieved in 1982 when they put a company of craft ashore over 700 metres of shallow water and surf onto a beach? They still maintain that option, BTW, but that's their grey funnel line and less easy to disguise from watching eyes.
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@wf – wouldnt the IR screening smoke be rather a nuisance in finding the SF bad guys? Some warm bodies in a cold bog is going to stand out beautifully to anyone looking out the window with an IR sensor….especially if they have just fired a missile….
That bog is then going to be a collateral free free-fire zone for the mortar crews…I would rather be the blokes inside the wire.
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that’s landing craft, LVT-7, not craft…
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@ChrisM: yes, it would hamper the view out. But the idea would be you only turn them on while an aircraft is taxiing or taking off. Once it’s up, it’s flares and ECM are operational, and Typhoon can go straight up to minimise exposure
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If the bad guys can see the Typhoon then the defenders can see them. After all you arent talking about an OP in a hide, your bad guys are lugging about and setting up an ATGW in miles and miles of nothing. After landing without being noticed, from a submarine that wasnt noticed, and then marching miles without being noticed. Anyone who volunteers for that luck-fest probably isnt sane enough for you to want to use them.
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@ChrisM: you said it, miles and miles of nothing. At night. When military forces never move, because no one can admire their fetching trousers, red or otherwise, while they march. Those Argies are going to have severe self-image problems even if they blow a few Typhoons up 😦
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I think the problem is the offload of some sort of big merchant ship without the use of a port, and tactically. Your scenario doesn’t guarantee use of the port – just (temporary) denial of the airfield.
British history includes a couple of episodes when we tried this (usually because Winston Churchill thought it was a GREAT idea). Gallipoli is the worst, but the WW2 amphibious landings include a couple of attempts to “run a ship right into the harbour and secure it undamaged”. This was tried in Madagascar and North Africa and then given up as it usually ended with a lot of dead, a VC or two, and the harbour well and truly denied with an extra sunken ship to get rid of. Even against Vichy French colonial conscript militia and using a warship with armour and guns and adapted to be easier to disembark from.
There was a plan at the battle of Narvik to grab the place with some ships’ Marine detachments and two companies of Guards, landing in ships’ rowing boats after Warspite’s guns had had a crack. (Winston again.)
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Come to think of it, the original “sail right up the fairway, they’ll never suspect it” plan was Zeebrugge, which was very, very brave but also entirely ineffective as it actually failed to close the port.
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@ X
I received your Telex. Penguins and sheep with cameras. Like it. Can we replace their wool with Kevlar, give them some more protection?
—-
Re; Sir Humphrey’s blog
Been reading it now ever since TD first highlighted it. If you haven’t read it then do, it’s good stuff and provides a solid counter-balancing opinion to a lot of the bluster you see in the press. This article is representative of the quality you will see there and so yes, I would recommend it.
(Sir H, I take cash or cheque, whichever is easier 😉 )
—–
Re; the general topic
I would agree with those who say that many of the scenarios require a lot of things to go right for Argentina and not for us. For me there is far too much complacency needed on behalf of our forces.
Someone brought up the Russian Fleet as an example of such but they hardly went in undetected. Their prescence was known and was being followed. They were forced closer to our Islands by poor weather, and were then shadowed by a Type 42 (and that’s the allocated resources that we know of).
It’s like the idea of the Argentines having a big work up exercise without us knowing about it or doing anything about it. I imagine any kind of major Argentine exercise would prompt a heightened state of alert in the garrison and in London.
I just can’t see all the planets aligning in Argentina’s favour without any kind of detection by us or any successful counter-actions or lucky breaks for us.
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@ Chris B – Seriously? You’re “gold-platting” sheep cameras?
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We’re not “Gold Plating”.
We’re “enhancing the operational capabilities of key assets in the UK defence specturm to assure the survival of said assets and to maximise the utility of these force multipliers to British warfighters”.
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@ Chris B – ah, thats alright then. Wjhat about stealth? you got to have some stealth nowadays…
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Chris B., two spots above,
Before I have time to weigh in on the thread properly (other than to echo on the quality of Sir H’s blog and claim my five quid, cap doffed, boss 🙂 that was another beautiful piece of bullshit bingo. I can’t recall now which of the Open Threads has your memo on TD-brand biccies in it but it’s proof you should have taken the Civil Service Exam yaers ago and looked for the nearest press officer’s posting soon as you were in.
GJ just above,
“Harold is that most dangerous of animals, a low-radar-cross-sectioned sheep ….”
I would like a photoshop of the SBS’s new Penguin Squadron up on I Can Has Cheezburger, straight away. Do wonders for recruiting in the southern dependencies and for site advertising.
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Alex,
“British history includes a couple of episodes when we tried this (usually because Winston Churchill thought it was a GREAT idea) ….”
Even against the dogged competition of stealth sheep and penguin commandos I think you win the last few hours of this thread. Any Admiralty or Premiership memos from Winnie the Bloodthirsty Pooh labeled “Amphibious Warfare” should have been stamped “Run Away Screaming” ….
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James, a little ways upthread,
Last dash in for the moment — very good point about C-RAM upthread. There are a number of smart, economical enhancements of that sort that would make a meaningful difference in terms of layering defence.
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SBS penguin squadron with rockets?
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Gareth Jones links … is there anything they *can’t* do?
Ta very much.
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OK never mind the FI bollocks, I want to know why Alex was no king about King George dock in Hull as a kid!
As far as i remember she had bow and stern doors, no side door.
OK, back to the invasion planning now………..
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Sorry, not sure how nocking became no king in last comment
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Stealth post jed.
No “C” em. 😛
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Excellent post Sir H – I particuarly like your focus on the difficulty of Argentina holding the islands in perpetuity. I am not sure why it is always considered that we would have to run down there in 3 weeks to re take the islands. Why not 6 months, Why not a year giving time to regain certain lost capabilities such as FA2. The political pressure in the UK woud be emmense for the leader who was prepared to admit defeat and through in the towel while the pressure on Argentina possibly through sanctions imposed by the UNSC would also be difficult to bear in the longer term. Our SSN’s would also give us the ability to conduct a longer cheaper war on our own terms striking Argentine bases to gradually degrade their air power making way for the eventual task force.
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Observer,
“no C ’em”
And we award you ten points. Now it’s Dennis Norden’s turn ….
Sir H. and James (in particular, though it’s good that x has pushed is towards a bit more clarity in re: trousers, red, cavalrymen, for the identification of),
I’ve enjoyed both the ‘granularity’ and the good sense of the debate hugely. Like James I am both concerned about the shape of Argentine domestic politics and whether it’s possible to get “inside the loop” (in the Yanks’ overused phrase) of MoD’s response process, and especially to the degree that secure internet communications make it possible to muddy the waters with too much initial and conflicting information, and allows political leadership a chance to muscle in on the operational details of a fast-moving crisis. As an example: if the Argies did put substantial lead elements of a brigade on commercial shipping and point them full ahead at the islands, do the elected school ties balk at whether the SSN in the area has ironclad ID of the correct ships, and whether breaking the hulls of a lead ship or two with Stingrays might drawn hundreds of hapless soldiers at a time and start a “war crime” PR disaster at the diplomatic level, rather than giving the professionals in both uniform and pinstripe time to evolve options? I would like to think there’s enough patience to accept martin’s view ( 23/2 at 0401Z) as one of those options — the long game — but that’s something better observed by those (like Sir H.) closer to the pols’ orbit and subject to change with each election or reshuffle.
Also worth considering genuinely “unconventional” options, as mentioned in another recent TITSNBN (no worries on manners, Sir H., just TD argot for The Islands That Shall Not Be Named after earlier heated posts in re: Falklands.) A Falklands “peace flotilla,” creative civil disobedience by Argentines in the EEZ, memorial services for Argentine casualties of the war turned into demos a la Marching Season in Ulster, all options for turning up the pressure while also creating a more varied, dense, and confused data set for analysis of possible future AR intentions. I’d recommend straightaway — and not in the more obviously Tory press, find some contrarian lefties like myself who remember the Dirty War all too well — who can point out that it’s a bit rich having a landscape-ravaging, pampas-genociding (some of what was done to First Peoples there would make Custer or Von Trotha — architect of the Herero genocide in Namibia — blush), Nazi-abetting, Dirty Warring, Shock-Doctrined, vividly class- and income-divided nation muscle in on one of the most mild-mannered and positive colonies of settlement in the Southern Cone. Change the narrative a bit.
As a technical note, do we think that, given prevailing wind conditions down there, one could effectively tie red pleated trousers (with or without turnups? Might affect wind resistence) to the proposed squadron of CVR(T)s? Probably helpful for aerial IFF when we send in the rocket-propelled penguins ….
Jed,
Who’s badmouthing Occupied Hull and her docks, God save them?
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“Drown,” not “drawn” in the above, autocorrect is not my friend.
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C-RAM has been mentioned twice now
The ones in Afghanistan have been put into (guess what!)an ISO container (radar, gun and all), but I guess that was to have aircon.
More generally “A C-RAM system, which can cover an area about four kilometers wide, costs $15 million. In addition to the United States, Britain and Israel have also bought C-RAM. There is a mobile version, mounted on a flatbed trailer, and hauled by a tractor”
– this version sounds more like the Swiss/German system, with all components separate, making it more mobile – to move between prepared positions, not to offer a fixed target that can be surveyed beforehand
– the $15m has been paid for (were the systems nicked from the RN?)and packing the sticking out bits (radome) separately makes them ready for straight-thru shipping from Karachi to FI
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One of my favourite sayings and one that I got from some US marines I worked with is “The Enemy gets a vote”. We have various plans psosted here about how the Argentinians would retake the Islands and in every single one of them not only do we “as the enemy” in this case not bother to vote we do not even bother attending the polling station.
Their are 2 viable Port options for offload of kit via non amphib vessels. ECMP and Port Stanley, both Ports require some serious Navigation to get into. To get into ECMP you have to enter Choiseul Sound which as a virtual dead end for vessels of any size is a pretty large combat indicator.
The vessel then needs to Navigate through some large Kelp Beds where its ability to mvre under atack will be very limited and finally make a starboard turn and pass through a 300M long and approx 45M wide gap. Now as alluded to earlier we have exercises every few months to practice defending the Islands and the red cell are made up of some pretty clever people so most options have been explored. Without going into details do we not think that we may have an idea how to stop this vessel entering ECMP.
Getting into Stanley involves passing through a gap into the outer harbour and then a narrower one into teh inner harbour. The berthing for the 6.5M draught ship is a jetty extended into teh harbour and linked to the land by a single lane pier. Again thought has gone into this.
Now the Argentinians can work up an “elite brigade” deploy 2 SSKs full of SF (do we not think that the 2 SSKs locations are briefed every morning when known)and have a parachute company ready for a combat jump. Yet as we are not voting we would never notice and perhaps instead of rotating Engineers and Chefs on the next air bridge stick a couple of companies of 40 Commando on instead. Or even fly a couple of C17s down South, unless the Argentineans are monitoring acension their first clue would be after arrival.
I am not saying that the Argentineans could not retake the Islands but we would have to get an awful lot wrong and they would have to get everything right.
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@martin: we won’t need a year to regenerate capabilities, it would take far longer than that now that the MOD instantly scraps stuff they don’t want under Whole Fleet Accounting instead of keeping the really complex stuff in reserve. After all, flogging an aircraft carrier for 2 million is good value…supposedly.
We can hardly keep chucking TLAM into AR for all this time, apart from everything else, the Yanks might stop selling them, and in the meantime all the islanders will be “cleansed”. We’re either ready, or we’re not.
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Rocket-propelled penguins. Yes, yes! But to be successful in today’s and tomorrow’s and even next week’s global defence market you have to take simple ideas like that and grow them. Have you ever heard of a company called Saunders-Roe……….
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“the $15m has been paid for (were the systems nicked from the RN?)and packing the sticking out bits (radome) separately makes them ready for straight-thru shipping from Karachi to FI”
The Phalanx mounts for the Centurion C-RAM used in Iraq came from the 36 the RN has.
They have been retured to the navy, for what i know. Centurion was a lease from the US, not a buy. And i think that the british army is now once more without a C-RAM system, even though it is mentioned as a future bit of kit within the SDSR.
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Hi Gaby,
That’s right “came from the 36 the RN has.”
– were sent back for remanufacture and were in the field 10 months later http://www.dsei.co.uk/files/dsei_showdaily3.pdf
“They have been retured to the navy, for what i know.”
– that’s the bit I don’t know; anyone?
SDSR having been about cost cutting, I would find it difficult to believe that a wholly new solution was being targeted (for C-RAM)?
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@ WF – I was refering to reactivation of FA2 harriers which are still being held in storage. Given unlimited funds and a 6 – 12 month period I believe we could reactivate a small number of FA2 to be flown of of Lusty with Ocean a reserve landing sight or post 2014 Queen Elizabeth if she is finished with out her CATOBAR configuration as is presently intended. Let’s not forget a group of amatures have now managed to get a Vulcan flying with nothing more than a few quid and a bit of elbow grease. With a 6 month time period there are allot of other capabilities we could develop as well such as SeaRAm for all vessels in the task force. I take your point about the US however last time they were willing to supply missiles and I would seriously doubt the US would put us under an arms embargo. I would also guess we would buy the extra TLAM before we started lobbing them into donwtown BA. Failing that it should not be too difficult to buy a Stormshadow (N) from MBDA. The missile is already developed and fits inside standard torpedo tubes. I’s open to debate how many LAM’s we could aquire but even just lobbing the 60-70 we have in stock would make a major dent in the Argentine Airforce not to mention apply considerable political pressure on el presidenty (what do you mean we can’t defend our airbases).
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@martin: FFS, don’t tell anyone they exist. The MOD would insist on scrapping them. But I take your point
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(Norland subthread – getting aboard, of course, and photos 1 and 3 here show it, this one shows her with a landing craft secured below it.)
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@ APATS,
both sides get a vote. As we are the ones defending the status quo, we should be voting in advance by things such as aperiodic reinforcement exercises. As it is, we appear to be repeating a pattern of behaviour that in 1981 sent some very wrong signals (i.e. reducing global lift and amphibious / aviation capabilities). It is only really in the last couple of months that we’ve said we’ll put a T-45 in there for a while. If the Spearhead battalion does a 3 week field firing exercise in the next couple of months and an SSN does an unexpected port visit, I’ll be more content.
Despite several views – which seem to concentrate on technocratic views of their declared military assets – I find it unreasonably short-sighted to believe that they could not get some SF onto the islands covertly, by some underhand sneaky means, and to follow that up with a Brigade arriving by ship(s) in quicktime.
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James, I agree and believ that there may well be an SSN S of the Equator currently. You do not adress my points ref how to get a Ship onto one of only 2 berths in the Islands that it can offload at though? Shipping down the Falklands is pretty sparse and thanks to radar sites and the pretty frequent fisheries flights and local fishermen and the FIPV and Fisheries Ships unkown contacts are pretty thoroughly investigated. even yachts are al most always interrogated on VHF if they approach teh Islands. Never mind a vessel big enough to offload a Brigade.
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@APATS: neither I or James suggested a large ship should approach the islands *until* MPA was neutralised and Mare Harbour secured. Such a large ship can wait 100 miles out to sea over the horizon in international waters in the meantime.
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Wf, so how are you going to neutralise MPA and secure ECMP then? A nightime para drop onto a miefield laden island with little knowledge of where Raper batteries are or portable MANPADS to assualt a defended position over unkown ground outnumbered 5 to 1 and the opposition behind barbed wire and in pill boxes with HMG and LMG. Whilst the FIDF who know the ground intimately and are very good shots hunt you over their local terrain?
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AFAIK there are no Sea Harriers in storage. Despite the most recent example having (IIRC) been delivered in 1999, they were sold off for a pittence and at least one is now a pub beer garden ornament. Wiki (I know, I know!) says:
{A number of aircraft were retained by the School of Flight Deck Operations at RNAS Culdrose; in theory these could be regenerated.}
Sounds pretty unlikely to me.
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I think the only operating SHARs at the FA2s at SISKIN. In reality the support network for SHAR was torn up nearly 10 years ago, and no spare parts have been ordered in that time. Its a lovely pipe dream, but something that will never, ever happen.
It would be easier to either borrow some AV8s off the USMC or rush JSF into service than bring back SHAR (and no thats not a serious suggestion!).
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Alex
Apols, your talking about the passenger gangway, which is of course a door but given the context I thought you meant a big side cargo door, which she did not have.
Ahhh those were the days, getting pissed up on the el cheapo overnight run to Roterdam, a few hours with the marvelous cloggies and then back to our glorious struggle against the fascist Thatcherite monstrosity that was “Humberside” 😉
Jackstaff – you should know better old chap, SSN’s don’t dispatch poxy Stingrays ! Tigerfish (if any left ?) or Spearfish !!
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Hi Chris,
Once this (for the fiscal year 2006/07) passed, I have not spotted any reports on the Sea Harriers (other than wishful thinking), so just agree with what you are saying:
“India is seriously considering United Kingdom’s offer of eight second-hand Royal Navy BAE Systems Sea Harrier for utilising them as training aircraft,a leading Defence Weekly has claimed.
The eight aircraft – the last Sea Harriers remaining in the service – would operate as training aircraft to support the existing Indian Navy Sea Harrier FRS-51 fleet.
“*We initiated the offer to acquire* the Sea Harriers after we came to know that the Royal Navy was pulling them out of service. We hope to get a good deal,” Rear Admiral Sunil Damle, Indian Assistant Chief of Naval Staff, said.
Damle said an Indian Navy team had visited the UK to inspect the Sea Harriers, which are being retired by 801 Naval Air Squadron by the end of next month.
The admiral, however, was unsure whether the Indian Navy would buy six or all eight aircraft, adding that a “clearer picture” regarding the exact number to be acquired would emerge once negotiations progressed.”
– five years later, the operational strength of Harriers flying off the carrier in India was around 10 (but then again, their only carrier spent 2 years in refit, to plug the gap for the other two that are rather late in arriving – so it has been a symbolic rather than a real capability, anyway)
– and the training mention, the Mig29Ks are actually in training, for the pilots, but off land, so why train for an aircraft that operates in a totally different way, and is on its way out
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@APATS: how about reading my initial post?
Plenty of tourists doubtless grab a 4WD and head out to the camp when some of those 50K a year liner passengers come calling. Just as well they all get a free minefield map on arrival, eh? That could come in useful when motoring around looking for the semi-fixed Rapier positions. Might some of them conceivably also take a few photo’s? Oh look, someone has:-
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/15274217
It’s even a RO-RO 🙂
I’m sure the FIDF feed on raw sheep brains daily (actually, possible!), and can smell an Argie 1 mile off (if they are still eating that many beans!). However, under my hypothesis, all of this would take place over a single night. The FIDF will be in bed for half of that, and by the time they can approach on the Stanley-Darwin road, there will be a roadblock on it.
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Nice pics of Port Stanley Have you ever been to the Falklands? Or tried to hire a car in Stanley? So you will hire a car, semi impossible then drive it to MPA, pass htrough the security check points and wander around the rapier positions with a camera and GPS?
So knowing teh position of the mine fields around stanley is useful, they are pretty clearly marked and visible in daylight. That becomes less easy when you are doing a low level parachute drop at night.
Of course as we do not get a vote the minute the SF who have evaded being seen and blown up a Typhoon strike we choose not to go to full alert and secure MPA and Stanley docks and choke points.
This allows the C130 to fly stealthily in avoiding the radar installations and the superb Danish air search radar on Clyde and the Gurad ship should she happen to be about. Disgorge her paras in a position wher they are not engaged as they float to the ground and do not become dispersed or lost. They can then march to the objective and take it as having missed the build up and training, the 2 SSKs dissapearing off the plot, the vessel hovering 100NM off the Falklands which is hardly a busy SLOC and teh exploding Typhoon we have still not stood teh garrison too.
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The Argentines have another solution and one that worried British forces in 1982. That is rather then try and take on the Forces based on East Falkland they avoid that and invade West Falkland. There are troops on West Falkland associated with the Radar stations but not in the same numbers. It is sparsely populated so it would be easier to land over time a Special forces company backed up a company of Marines.
Firstly they would take out the Radar stations on West Falkland using the troops snuck in over time blinding MPA and then a rapid reinforcement of men and equipment onto West Falkland. If they procured a long range MLRS system and something like the S300 surface to air missile systemthey could rush them onto West Falkland and cause real problems. The MLRS and SAM systems can threaten MPA and make reinforcements difficult. That will give the Argentines time to properly Garrison West Falkland with several thousand troops plus a few hundred patriotic civilians living in huts. With the troops and civies dug in the UK would have to send an amphibious task force to dislodge them, in the meantime the Argentines are making a pain of themselves in the UN about how they have a new indigenous population on West Malvinas.
Whilst it doesn’t bring them to their goal of taking the Islands as a whole it does bring them closer. They can make life very difficult to the Falkland Islanders if the air bridge is under the gun of guided rocket and surface to air fire. As time went by and they developed their population oon West Falkland they would start disrupting fisheries and oil operations.
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APATS,
I’m not sure if you looked back at my original proposition, which is that a small SF force could effectively neutralise MPA by stopping all vehicle and aviation / air movement through the use of ATGW. That’s what I propose could be done, not to attack it bunker by bunker. I’m not sure where you got the idea of a para drop from – that was not part of my worry about what they could do.
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Fed, that is an option often discussed. There are a few problems associated with it though. West Falkand has a small jetty at Port Howard which faces East onto teh Falkland Sound making vessles which want to use it sail up or down the sound. that emans passsing through the North or South enterance where they can be engaged.
There are also only a few rough field strip which are used by iner Island “islander aircraft” so there will be a problem supplying the troops on shore especially in the face of a naval blockade.
S300 would be a bugger and would be a priority to destroy if anyone would ever sell them it.
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James, the para drop was by GW. If you cannot reinforce teh SF that are disrupting MPA then it is just a matter of time, how many 30kg ATGW did they carry over the barren terrain and stay out of sight. How may could they fit in an SSK in teh first place. You may be able to stop air movement for a short period until you are seen but the place is too big and with too many vehicles to stop all vehicle movement.
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@ Fedaykin,
I recall reading years ago that someone neutral in the UN had proposed a “one island each” solution to the FI impasse. There are hardly any islanders on West Falkland, and lots of empty space for them to relocate to East Falkland.
From Argentina’s perspective that may now be a better solution to achieve through negotiation, plus probably a wedge of compensation money for the West Falklanders if they choose to move. I’m not an expert in the international law of maritime boundaries and fishing / mineral rights etc, but I think that Argentina would extend her territorial waters significantly if she owned West Falkland.
I’m not advocating such a solution, but it may be tabled for negotiation if this goes on much longer.
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@various
Re SHAR – still over a dozen left at Culdrose & as of Sept last year some were still to be seen taxiing around (according to a report from FighterControl)…
http://www.fightercontrol.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=41376
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APATS,
a slick and well-rehearsed operation need only take less than 6 hours to keep MPA neutralised and Stanley Airport / Harbour held while the Brigade comes in from 80 miles offshore and offloads. Once it is offloaded, the tables are turned.
Vehicle movement along the Stanley – Darwin road would be stopped as soon as the first vehicle is destroyed outside MPA.
I don’t believe it would be possible for the Garrison at MPA to clear an unknown quantity of SF from unknown positions overlooking MPA in 6 hours, particularly at night. I don’t believe the FIDF (mostly Stanley based, I imagine) could turn out, arm themselves and clear 50 SF holding a narrow neck of land about 1000 metres wide in the same six hours of night, nor could they stop a ship offloading in Port William or even docking at Stanley Harbour itself.
6 hours for the Argentine SF to do their stuff until relieved. Certainly possible.
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@APATS: never been to the FI. But I know the FI equivalent of the M1, the Stanley-Darwin road, goes just south of MPA. Car hire seems easy enough:-
http://www.falklandislands.com/contents/view/23
Face it, there are plenty of issues dropping paras in the FI, primarily the wind, which averages 30km/h. But there aren’t unmarked minefields, hordes of FIDF, farmers with shotguns, offshore SOSUS arrays, or a guard ship just off Mare most of the time. We can have lots of excellent radars, but if the Typhoon’s aren’t flying, we can do very little
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Isn’t defending an airfield from Special Forces the raison d’etre for the RAF regiment? Do we have any down south?
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You do know the beach at Port William is mined and they would have to offload over the beach? it is a Port in name only. So we are back to the Argentinians being able to land 100 SF covertly on the Island and get them into position without being spotted, you are now splitting them into 3 different groups as they attacking MPA, blocking the Stanley MPA road and taking and holding, which spit of land, the road to the airport or the gap to the inner harbour?
At the same time they have trained and embarked an elite brigade onto a vessel which is able to lurk 80nm off the FIs for no apparent reason which will eitehr be shining dodgy AIS data or not shining at all. We have failed to notice the training, the increased op tempo of the 3 SSKs(The TR1700 boats can also only carry small groups of SF e.g ten or less when they have weapons like ATGWthe 209 boat even less, according to the German submarine Officer I just asked anyway). The ship loitering offshore or any diplomatic, sigint or humint signals that this was going to happen?
At the same time the Argentinians have ensured that the guard ship and patrol vessel are not in the correct place to do anything about it.
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WF It is not so much the availability of hire cars, though that company that lists its cars has about one of each. It is thea. the your are not from round here grilling you get at teh hire office, why are you not using organised tours.
It does but you cannot really see much from the road.
Yes you can drop some paras if you do not overfly a SAM battery or get engaged by a MANPAD but then what? You are going to be on foot and preparing to assualt a fully alert garrison. plus if the guard ship is about you could be on the end of some 4.5 HE.
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One point about the Falklands – the locals are incredibly suspicious of anyone they do not recognise. This is a local community, and they know trouble when they see it.
A couple of years ago an Argentine came alongside in a yacht and raised the Argentine flag from his yacht – the vessel was surrounded by shotgun toting locals in seconds.
This is a communinity which is probably the single most pro UK Forces organisation in the world, and in which they would instinctively recognise something not right.
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Would it be something like this then
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@APATS: please read my posts. No paras to attack MPA! Para’s to attack an undefended Mare Harbour. Do the locals usually prowl around there at 9pm at night? There’s not even a pub!
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Question for you all then.
Has anyone been swayed one way or the other by what is without a doubt the best informed thread on the subject I have ever read
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Wf The minute the garrison is stood to Mare Harbour is reinforced, the pill boxes are manned, the razor wire is pulled across the roads and the LMGs and HMGs stood to. The defence of Mare Harbour is an integrated part of the defence of the complex. Without giving too much away ref the escalation process, people actually take their weapons and move out of the accomodation complex to live out of their work/defensive positions earlier than you would think.
if they had not and just suppose the typhoon explosion we talk about cane out of the blue they would be down to ECMP immediately afterwards.
As the aircraft will be tracked inbound then it is hardly a suprise attack!
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APATS,
re Mare Harbour, that’s why it is a less easy target to attack than Stanley, and why paras are not a realistic option. I’m with you on that.
The mine map in 2011 shows the beach on the north east side of Stanley Airport to be clear. Difficult to explain without a map but the narrow east / west isthmus due east of Stanley narrows to 2,000 metres if the jetty is included, and less than 1000 metres if the jetty is excluded. It is artificially narrowed further by minefields to the south, leaving approximately 500 metres that if seized and held cut access to the Airport. The cleared area north of Whalebone Cove sits higher than the surrounding land, and defilades any infantry force trying to advance along the isthmus to clear away opposition. I’m cannot recall precisely, but I think it was used in 1982 by Argentina for precisely that purpose as part of their defence laydown.
(Note, I’m going on memory and some 10 year old photos, plus the 2011 mine map. If your knowledge is more up to date and indicates a flaw in that thinking, fair does.)
Story out of school. The Argentine engineer commander in 1982 on the Falklands (responsible for properly marking and recording the minefields under international law) was later promoted and by 1995 was a UN Sector Commander in Croatia. The Chief of Staff of the UN HQ in Zagreb was a Brit, had been in the Falklands in 1982 and had some difficulties with various minefields. Let’s just say that the Argentine had a particularly unpleasant tour!
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@APATS: there’s one infantry company in MPA. Assuming the aircraft concerned are flying low on ingress, they won’t be visible until 50 miles south of Mare, assuming that Mount Kent RRH is looking that way. That’s about 12 minutes before they can drop. In that 12 minutes, the RIC and the RLC troop in Mare are going to be armed and in bunkers? Remember, if the platoon of SF with RBS70/ATGW are in place, they don’t need to fire until the RAF scramble. That’s…optimistic
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Speaking of Falklands mines, some of you new chaps might not have read this cracking guest post
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2010/10/falkland-islands-de-mining/
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@WF- Could I put it to you that you are speaking to several people here who have served in the FI, who have a very good idea of the defences and the situation, and who know a good deal more about the sitation and the plans for the defences, and UK contingencies and capabilities than can openly be discussed on the open forum.
Your posts increasingly come across as fixated on one or two specific issues, but you do not seem to take into account that these issues are likely to have been thought about, and that contingencies are very likely to exist, but they cannot be disclosed here. I would suggest to give you the answers that would emphatically close down some of your lines of argument would require many of the posters here to risk breaching the OSA.
This is the difficulty of internet discussion, those who know are often forced to sit in frustrated silence watching those who dont know argue about how many angels can fit onto the head of a pin…
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@Sir Humphrey: I agree that there are plenty of posters here that know more than I. There are no doubt plenty of contingencies that have been prepared for but are not discussed.
However, FI defence relies on MPA and Mare remaining operational and in UK hands so that air defence and long range surveillance can be performed and reinforcements arrive. The current forces cannot reasonably dominate the 100+ sq km area around and in MPA to the degree required. Hence my knocked up scenario. The force levels are no secret.
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TD said “Has anyone been swayed one way or the other by what is without a doubt the best informed thread on the subject I have ever read.”
1) I am a lot happier since I have been told MPA isn’t just a Brize Norton clone.
2) I am bit perturbed that James and Humph disagree just a bit because they both know what they are on about.
3) A lot of what is argued with relation to how the world would perceive Argentine aggression is beginning to sound a bit hollow. A second Obama term and UK involvement in an Iranian adventure would do us no good in the eyes of Third World. It would make a UK UNSC veto on any Third World protest sound a bit petulant and would be more a demonstration of our impotence than strength.
4) I am a but unhappy too that most of what is being said about the FI defence is more to do with Argentine weakness.
5) Which leads me on to Typhoon. I have said several times now the Argentines best strategy would be not to engage the wunder-weapon. It A-toG capability is limited. There is no anti-ship capability. But the Argentines can’t get to the islands so don’t worry!!! The Argentines weren’t strafing Government House on April 2nd, 82. The time over the islands for Argentine aircraft in 82 when they were better equipped was quite limited. So what of now 30 years later? The rump of the defence personnel costs is for the RAF; actually that is the rump of the whole FI defence costs. I am not RAF bashing. If the FJ deployed down south had air-to-ground and anti-ship I would feel happier.
6) There is a lot of faith placed in SSNs despite their dwindling numbers.
7) Perhaps I have spent too much time re-fighting the Cod War but there seems to be no concern about this less than war scenario. A brief exchange of gunfire between T45 and one of the simpler Argentine vessels would cost us a lot with only 6 T45s.
8) Falklands Island Defence Force.
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To be honest, I really do think James is a lot more optimistic about OPFOR’s chances than it really is justifiable, but that’s just opinion.
I also think there is too much focus on the MFA and the mindset that it’s the “do or die” installation that represents the total sum of UK fighting ability. So what if they locked it down and no aircraft can fly? What do you lose? Air support, heli-mobility, aerial recce and maybe aerial resupply. Nice to have, but these things are not really critical. What would really be the major problem in an invasion is really the defending infantry company.
Since there are only 2 major offloading points, what’s stopping defences from fortifying in depth on them? Covering the harbour with LAWs, GPMGs and ATGMs isn’t exactly difficult and any ship berthing is a big fat sitting target which draws the eye.
So wf and James, I’d say so what if the MPA gets closed down for 6hrs? If the Argentinian Air Force doesn’t come into play, all it does is level the playing field slightly. There is still the fortified defence advantage and the LOTS disadvantage for the attackers to overcome.
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‘If the FJ deployed down south had air-to-ground and anti-ship I would feel happier.’
They have the former but not the latter. We don’t have any anti-ship and haven’t for 15+ years. You’re right I am surprised we not had anything for that long in the anti shipping, went when the GR1B got scrapped.
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What would happen if you dropped a paveway on a ship, or shot it up with a fast jet cannon?
Its not an anti ship missile and might not put them on the bottom but could it still spoil their day?
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@ X,
to perhaps allay some of your fears, or maybe to allay some and create others, I’ll try to sum up my perspective. Much (all?) of it is referred to in more detail above or the other couple of FI threads in the last couple of months. Maybe Sir Humphrey will respond as well.
I’m with Sir Humphrey on the likelihood being low, and the chances of permanent success lower still. But, there’s still a small possibility that despite wise counsel, they try it on. You’ve got to credit the Argentines with not being complete fools, learning their 82 lessons and coming up with a plan that stands a reasonable chance of success, that plays to their strengths and our weaknesses.
Strategically, we appear again to be slipping into a mode of cutbacks that can be misinterpreted, as we did, and was, in 1981. If there is a need for cutbacks, there is also a need to think through from potential allies and enemies’ perspectives, and to work out how we communicate our remaining intent unambiguously. That communication in the specific case of the Falklands could be through reasonably frequent but aperiodic reinforcements (say by Spearhead, as part of their work up training, SSN visits, etc, as well as a very direct conversation between embassies and ministries. Leave them in no doubt of our intent, but in serious doubt about our on/near-island capabilities on a week by week basis. And stop doing jolly little trips with the ruddy Guard Ship. It should have one purpose only. Chile does not need visiting, nor St Helena, or if they do fly out a Minister and the RM band.
Operationally, we’ve got both inadequate force levels and the wrong type of equipment in some critical areas:
Force levels should deter. It is always a numbers game. If we have a formed Battle Group there of airmobile light infantry and terrain-capable recce / reaction vehicles (could be CVR(T), Viking, whatever), they’ll need to put in a Brigade with at least equivalent mobility, and they probably can’t do that. What we have is company plus dependent on 2 civilian helicopters, and they can take them out with perhaps two Battalions. They can as I argue get a Brigade ashore if they hold a port, and they can hold a port with 50 or so SF and some joined up planning. Once they’ve got a port, the game is over and it is negotiations and a settlement, not a victory. We cannot generate another Task Force of the size we did in 82. UK infantry battalions are rare and precious commodities, and we may not be able to stretch to a permanent battalion, but we may be able to engender enough uncertainty by regular training deployments by Spearhead.
I do not for a moment credit the ability of the 1400 “others” to do anything more than man a trench somewhere in MPA, or provide local defence for their remote Rapier or radar site. No mobility, no sub-unit infantry training, probably bugger all STA, and they’ve all got proper jobs to do to keep MPA running. If Argentina has any sense, they will carefully leave MPA alone once they have stopped any aircraft from flying. Let the 1400 permanently man defensive positions and not be doing their proper jobs until Argentina has enough forces on the island to be invincible, and that means taking out the GBAD sites and radars.
Wrong kit: no A-G capable fast air at MPA, no AH, no (limited at best) MPA. Limited AAR and transport for reinforcement from the UK. No LPH anywhere in the fleet after Illustrious and Ocean go. No anti-shipping missiles either on harbour approaches or fast jets. How the hell are we going to stop them? An SSN, so I hope that there’s an SSN permanently loitering within easy reach. I’m not privy to what actually happens on that score. We’d better hope our SSN has the right sort of ROE as well. We’ve got very limited mobility at sub-unit level on the island if nothing can fly either, although things like quads and 4x4s are readily available for tactical movement.
(Just seen Observer’s comment, to which my reply is that “neutralising MPA” is the critical success for Argentina. If we cannot move by air or road out of MPA, Argentina has time to land forces unmolested. We are fixed in place. There’d be little need to assault MPA directly if a few ATGW and mortars can stop movement and keep the 1400 covering their arcs in their trenches, and a lot of political advantage to offering a bloodless surrender when Argentina has got clearly superior force levels on the island. The 50 or so SF it would take to achieve the initial fixing in place would of course need relief by maybe a battalion to continue to fix us in place for several more days, but the Argentine main effort at that point would be on hunting down the GBAD and putting ATGW into the radar sites).
I’m not going to go into Int on this thread because whatever I once knew is wildly out of date (literally a decade), but also not ever going to be mentioned by me. With good Int, we can nullify every advantage our MOD decisions and political budgeting have given to Argentina.
But the enemy get a vote, as well. I don’t think anyone thought of marines posing as scrap metal dealers in 1982, and they’ve had 30 more years to come up with something equally plausible for the rematch, should they be foolish enough to try it on.
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Paveway has a chance of sinking it depending on if the round went all the way below the waterline. Cannon not so much, but it really will make a mess of the superstructure.
‘If the FJ deployed down south had air-to-ground and anti-ship I would feel happier.’
Think everyone would be, but we have to work with what we have, not what we want. Pity though.
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Each Typhoon can carry 6 x 1000lb bombs. A lot the ships are pretty small and some look (to me) to be container type ships used for supply. If any event (however unlikely) they would be streched, however even without LIII I still think they could do quite a bit of damage.
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Dont need to sink them, just put a few rounds through the bridge when they are Navigationally constrained inshore and they will run aground.
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My point is that the lack of a propper anti ship missile doesn’t make Typhoon completely useless against ships.
The other side proved in 1982 that even the ‘wrong sort of bombs’ can do a lot of damage to a ship full of people. It would be a brave gamble to send the follow-up ship in without knowing for sure that all 4 Typhoons were definitley out of action.
Peter
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Interest piece as always. Agree it’s very slim chance of it happening. Just a couple of questions have we ever done a spearhead reinforcement at this distance? Would like to see an actual run tested even in secret because I doubt we could do it within 24hrs at present. Have we ever had the plans stress tested by the US for example just to see if we haven’t thought of something a fresh pair of eyes works wonders sometimes.
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Whilst on the subject of bombs everyone has so far thought “inside the box”. have we learnt nothing from the last 12 12 years or so? We want to deny a port, both of which have narrow entrances, a mine would be inside the box but how about a rhib full of explosives half sunk in the gap? remote detonator, the ships would probably not be using search lights to avoid being fire upon. Or a massive car bomb on the jetty detonated as the ship comes alongside. All of a sudden instead of an elite brigade you have confuse soldiers in a smoky dark wet unfamiliar place trying to save themselves. Just a thought and maybe one I have aired elsewhere.
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@TD: I think the discussion has brought out several points
– as @x says, there’s too much reliance on SSN’s, which are very expensive and not terribly effective ways of doing point defence, as are guard destroyers/frigates. Given the nub of the matter is MPA, why not keep Clyde only and spend the savings on a larger army garrison and increasing the number of Typhoon?
– I find @Sir Humphrey’s attitude a little confusing. He quite rightly sees MPA as the centre of gravity, but then assumes the only way of neutralising it is via immediate direct assault, requiring the occupation of the base. This raises the bar extremely high for AR, and hence makes them unlikely victors. I think that’s what the Yank’s call “drinking the Kool-Aid”.
– I think the landing of a significant landing party via SSK is unlikely given what we have learnt about AR’s SSK’s. A disguised fishing vessel or the like would be required for a significant SF or raiding force
– just whacking together a basic plan makes the point that we really need more early warning of aircraft and ship movements around the FI. The obvious brute force solution would be 3 E-2’s, but that seems way too expensive for a static requirement. Perhaps @James could come up with an airship solution, or we could buy Jindalee from Australia
– we need an antiship capability for Typhoon
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@ Topman
I wasn’t RAF bashing honestly. And I did say limited to air-to-ground. But you have to admit it isn’t CAS platform is it? And I know that with the demise of Sea Eagle and Tornado the RAF lost its anti-ship capability. What I am driving at is that Falklands Island defence is always presented in terms of RAF Mount Pleasant and Typhoon. And I am just not convinced considering the Typhoon’s capabilities and the type of conflict that would come about (less than war, SF incursion), dare I say acts of terror(?),maritime etc) that they would be much use. And as I said there are what 700 bods down there supporting Typhoon, a tanker, and a SAR flight (yes it helps the FIG, but let us be honest it is there to rescue air crew primarly; not that is a bad thing!) Don’t think the FI are worth a whole battalion but I think an extra company, making 3 manoeuvres units with FIDF, What is that extra 120 bods or so. Tiny when compared to the number of RAF bods. But as TD reminds us it is personnel that makes operation expensive. Like I say not being anti-RAF or anti-Typhoon; certainly wouldn’t be without the Typhoon; all I am doing is questioning its real world worth vs the cost.
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I do feel much better FL due to Humph’s article but I still want more that one company to be there as I’m a bit perturbed that James and Humph disagree just a bit because they both know what they are on about.
I would love some vikings/warthogs there and/or CVR(T)
but that extra company is definitely needed.
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A cn295 in us coast guard config perhaps. Don’t see the need for anti ship on typhoon did we not sink some boats in libya and Iraq using paveway with multiple fusing options or brimstone. Anti ship missiles you really need to know what your shooting at. But I would consider the Norwegian missile that’s due on f35 for typhoon integration if we really felt the need.
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In iraq the Us used blimps on static wires with EO devices to survey the surroundings that would help detect any SF insertion.
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@APATS: excellent thought on the mining of Mare. Simple, cheap. But only a short term solution if not covered by fire.
@Observer: Maverick was used on Harrier. G/H make great anti-ship weapons, why not qualify on Typhoon if we have them in stock?
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Wf would not need to be covered by fire the survivors would get ashore sans equipment hypothermic and not interested in anything. Combat effectiveness would be zero and casualties high.
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@ James
Well I have queried the company group’s vehicle manifest before. There is a reason why the Islander’s all drive 4×4 even on their roads. Even though the road network has improved many tracks just really indicate direction of travel; that is if you pick the right one.
If you ignore the map and just read as I have done the about the 82 war then the islands do grow. There are wide open spaces where the trained man could conceal himself. There were what 10,000 Argentines on the islands looking for trouble and our SF were still creeping about. How would 120 or so bods of the company group hope to cover all that terrain. To that end I think the FIDF need to concentrate on that sort of work and so need proper vehicles to do that work. If memory serves weren’t some units in the Cold War trained to chase down Soviet SF groups? And one more time the FIDF need vehicles to carry big weapons so the Argentines see that they are going to shove them back into the sea. More for physiological effect than real; I think talk of them taking to the hills is a bit silly. This is 1940s France. The only place worth attacking is Stanley. MPA, and Mare Harbour. The Argentines just have to sit and wait. Or does that sound silly?
Another thing you realise if you read a lot about the 82 war is as you have said these guys aren’t numpties. And they aren’t cowards. You have to separate in your mind the conscripts from the professionals.
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‘I wasn’t RAF bashing honestly.’
I know, I didn’t think you honestly were.
‘And I did say limited to air-to-ground. But you have to admit it isn’t CAS platform is it? And I know that with the demise of Sea Eagle and Tornado the RAF lost its anti-ship capability. ‘
Sorry I misread, thought you said you’d feel better if it had some AG capability. No it’s not at the moment you’re right.
‘And I am just not convinced considering the Typhoon’s capabilities and the type of conflict that would come about (less than war, SF incursion), dare I say acts of terror(?),maritime etc) that they would be much use.’
I see, I think that you are right and wrong, in a technical sense no it can’t cover every avenue or protect against every threat, although they are pretty flexible. But I still think they offer a deterence above what they can do. Something tangible and war like, something like deterence but more. Can’t quite explain myself or maybe I’m waffling it’s getting late 🙂
‘And as I said there are what 700 bods down there supporting Typhoon, a tanker, and a SAR flight’
It doesn’t take that many people to support a few aircraft. It would be a fraction of that. There might be that many there but the base does have other functions.
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@APATs
I did think of simply mining the port, but I severely doubt that that would sway the minds of those already fixed on thinking the Falklands is an undefendable deathtrap.
@wf.
Overreliance on SSN? From all the arguments posted by you and James, I’d say there is an overreliance on the MPA! Both your arguments are that once the MPA is hindered, everyone’s going to die. *cue manical laughter*
The linchpin of UK defences is not the airfield, it’s the infantry. Airpower is an enabler, not the be all and end all. And I do think James did them a serious disservice in the interest of argument.
Not to say more assets will not be welcome, but to say that the Falklands is undefendable just because 100 SF jams up an airfield is .. really stretching it.
And “drinking the coolaid” means being suicidal. Having a brigade assault the MPA is the safe option, therefore NOT suicidal, hence no coolaid for you. Drinking the coolaid is attacking an island defended by 1400 men with 100. Now THAT is coolaid time.
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@ James
When I say “you” I mean the collective unspecified you not “you James”
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@APATS: I meant it’s not much good to mine a harbour if you don’t monitor the mines. What if the Buzo Tactico divers blow them up?
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APATS,
the jetty bomb is a bit hopeful. FIPASS has 300m of jetty length, so you’d need several, maybe a couple of dozen. Any half sensible Argentine commander is going to have half a dozen Oerlikons and HMGs mounted on the berthing side to razz up anything that is on the jetty when they are 100 yards away from docking. That will disrupt your bomb.
More sensible would be an underwater charge or a mine underneath the jetty, so that the ship sinks in situ and no reinforcements can easily come in to the same jetty.
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@ Topman
Yes I know what you mean re Typhoon. I was going to say something along those lines too but couldn’t articulate what I wanted to say. They do have that awesome factor that would spook the unknowing. But what about the gutsy guy with the MANPAD?
As for the 700 bods well I meant ATC, cooks, medics, etc. etc. not just spanner twirlers and armourers.
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Remember an old improvised anti-landing craft charge, you plant an AT mine underwater and plant an iron picket supported by a cross bace into the fuse well. When the landing craft hits the picket, the force sets off the AT mine and it fires the spike into the hull of the craft as well as trying to flip the boat. Old days. Still interesting.
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Gak, I’m late, later, off to the salt mines.
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@Observer: for obvious reasons, we cannot afford to station a brigade on the FI. We therefore need to deter, or destroy if necessary unfriendly forces approaching the FI to avoid them overmatching our infantry there before they can be reinforced.
Drinking the kool-aid actually describes doing something suicidal because your “elders and betters” said it was a good idea, despite the fact it’s complete nonsense
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I see we haven’t finished writing the Las Malvinas Liberation Manual for the Argentines yet.
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Observer,
I know it is a long thread, but if you go back you’ll find that I don’t ever say that 100 SF can attack 1400 men. That would be stupid. If you read, you’ll see that the job of the 100 SF is to stop aircraft flying by threat and shock action, reinforcement of Stanley from MPA by overwatch of a road, and to hold a strip of land for 6 hours against a TA infantry company that is surprised, under-gunned, and not in possession of many facts about the situation. That is within the capabilities of 100 SF.
The first Brigade’s function is to take out GBAD and radars. It is only when the second Brigade arrives that a surrender is offered to the Garrison. Why attack something (MPA) that you may not have to, and would find useful in a few days time?
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@Phil: they think your weaponisation is a just a joke. Wait until they try something silly!
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‘They do have that awesome factor that would spook the unknowing.’
Yes something of constant reminder, I think someone touched on it early, whenever this comes up the stock image in the media is the a/c be it Typhoon or previously the F3 and I don’t think it’s by chance.
‘But what about the gutsy guy with the MANPAD?’
I don’t think it’s much to do with guts, anything is possible but I would hope in nearly every incident any manpad they had the Typhoons rhwr/das would be more than a match.
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I feel like this
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Topman,
that’s why ATGW against taxiing or parked aircraft is a better (initial) solution. There’s no countermeasure we have. And you can use them to take out the control tower, or other key points. Most ATGW will make mincemeat of hangar doors and explode inside, which won’t be too healthy for delicate parked aircraft and maintenance crews.
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Are the hangers not HAS down there?
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Well even they’re not the hangers are dug in as per Google Earth.
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No your right, although you’ll have to figure out which HAS they are in. But most SF would try wait until they were sure which one I’m sure. But stranger things have happened in war.
How accurate are they at distance? They do have some earthworks around them. James how easily could someone aim for and hit for say the roof line above the earth works of an aircraft shelter?
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@ Phil
I am building a giant relief model of the Falklands out of mash potato so I am ready to plot troop movements should the balloon go up.
Just thought if the balloon does go up are you still liable for call up? Shall I start knitting socks and collecting copies of lads’ mags for your comfort package just in case? Do your prefer Mars or Snickers?
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More to the point, how many ATGWs do you think could be carried. Lets just remind ourselves of the terrain here – its horribly boggy, hard going and draining. I’ve walked up tumbledown and mount kent on a pleasant day – I’d hate to do it in the dark carrying a full load.
We are into the assumption here that the Argentines can land 100 men – which its fair to say that with current capabilities (and remember this article is written looking at current capabilities) they cannot do.
We then assume that they seem to have a near unlimited number of highly accurate ATGWs which they will be able to load into an SSK, which will be full to bursting as it is. They will then unload these devices, land them, and march up to 10 miles inland from the closest possible beach, and in an area regularly visited due to its penguin population. They will not be spotted en route, and will manage to circumnavigate their way around the perimiter of the base, setting up multiple firing points to miraculously hit every one of the HAS’s, a runway which is nearly 2.5 miles along, and all the critical facilities on a site which is several miles in diameter. They will do this without missing, without exhausting their unlimited supply of ATGWs and be able to fire from multiple firing points without being detected.
While this is going on, 6 hours later an air assault will land, having somehow evaded the rather capable air defence network built precisely to detect this sort of attack, and manage to avoid an alerted ground defence force which includes a highly effective set of SAM batteries. They will then land on a runway which won’t have been alerted to the possibility of an attack at Stanley, and which in no way will have had steps taken to deny it to the attacking force.
At the same time, the UK will in no way begin the Faklands reinforcement plan?
Am I correct in sensing that this requries an awful lot of terribly convenient ‘fact aligments’ to make this work well for the Argentines?
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Topman,
good ATGW operator will ask you which window pane you want to go in by. Certainly about a 5 foot CEP at 3890m is around normal for Swingfire, and that is years old.
Are we looking at the same hangars / HAS? There are 4 odd shaped bright white hangars on the northern side of the runway, with taxiways leading from them, and they don’t appear dug in. I’m not familiar with the current setup.
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@Sir Humphrey: neither James or I are fixated on SSK delivery. Check my original post. Now the staff planning figure for large bodies of men were 1km/hr during the Falklands war, but units man packing Milan marched 100 miles across the FI last time, carrying similar loads, at a faster pace, and MPA is 5 miles from the sea. I suggested an airdrop one hour after SF goes noisy, James suggested using the noisy stage to trigger the attack on Mare: no 6 hour delay, no landing on runways. Please read our posts, or I shall start obsessing 🙂
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Only a quick comment for the moment late in the workday but two things:
– First, I would stick with TD’s comment that this really is heating up to be perhaps the best thread round the site ever, particularly given the ratio between thoughtful detail and level heads willing to listen, given strongly opposing viewpoints.
– And Jed, *hangs head in shame*, you are quite right that not even the Swiftsures, bless their knobby heads, carry any poxy Stingrays. I had a late night and T45 undergunning (and under-sensoring; remind me again why RN blue-water task force destroyers don’t get their own proper vds?) on the brain but that’s still no excuse ….
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x,
I recommend some (for you) imported Yukon Golds. They’re quite pliant and you get a lovely coloring effect to match the MPA bunkers….
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Sir Humphrey,
a couple of de-tuners:
Coast to ATGW range of MPA runway is about 4 kilometres. Depending on the exact spot you pick to land at, it is dead ground to both MPA and Mare, and passes no human habitation. There is a ridgeline 3.8 kms SSW of MPA that is the first point of intervisibility. The ridgeline extends 900 metres NW-SE which gives ample separation between firing positions, and is 50 metres higher than MPA’s base elevation, giving you overwatch of just about everything. It has a concave slope, so any QRF from MPA is fully in sight from the ridgeline. MAPATS range is 5,000, bringing the complete complex of MPA into range. In addition, the east, south and west vehicle exits from MPA are covered from such a position. The north exit as you know is a 3 mile cul-de-sac. (I’m quite happy to mention all of that as it has been published before as a think piece in a publicly available journal, and the implications fully taken onboard. Sorry reader Juan Antonio from BA, think up your own plan).
I would trust a decent infantry company to be able to disembark some RIBs and take up positions on the ridgeline unobserved, let alone SF.
Can 50 SF haul a dozen MAPATS base units and 48 missiles 3.8 kilometres? Yes.
Can you land 50 SF unobserved from 2 SSK? Much more difficult. Certainly 24. Perhaps a double run to bring up more missiles, and reduce the overwatch party to 24. SF will not be stressed by the idea of 16 kms carrying 40 kilo loads in one night.
Other options are available for either 24 or the full 50 complement. Fast approach from a mid-size trawler to 12 mile limit, offload RIBs and start fishing (with the pre-booked legal licence) for when the FPV turns up in the morning. Long run in from 50 miles with WPC. Quietly off-loaded RIBs from a vessel in distress, making slowly for Mare Harbour with lots of public radio traffic. Heavens, they put scrappies onto South Georgia 30 years ago, and they’re not stupid.
Ditto for the other party seizing Stanley Airport.
The air assault is not my idea. I don’t think it would work because of the GBAD.
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x again,
Also be sure to deep-fry Phil’s Mars bars in case they shift him to a battlegroup full of Jocks. Ever prepared. As for lads’ mags there seem to be plenty of juicy scandals about Argentine football WAGs that would put the FA to shame and have resulted in, ahem, pictorial prospects of the co-respondents. Armies should always know how to scavenge the local environment.
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@ WF,
slight correction. The noisy Stanley stage to trigger the shut down of MPA. I’m going nowhere near Mere until the elite Brigade is on hand. It’s too obvious, and those Port and Maritime Regiment RLC boys too scary for my 50 SF. 😉
There’s no need. Once the Brigade comes ashore over the north east beach at Stanley Airport, it’s a gentle mop up operation (before the much more complex British / F Islanders counter-insurgency / guerrilla operation starts – a whole different article TD will no doubt think about writing). A Port and Maritime Troop does not need to commit suicide in front of a combat infantry battalion.
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@James: as you said, air assault my idea, primarily because it reduced warning time for Mare defenders while getting a lot of people on the ground quickly. Given FSC Rapier range of 8km, marginal depending on the fire unit location
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A question – just how much surface search radar coverage do we have/ think we have? I have never been down south during my time in, but the coatline is pretty huge yes? We have just one patrol boat and maybe one warship? Are the are any naval Lynx or Merlin – not that I am aware of but just asking.
How many Seakings and what radar do the carry?
What I am trying to figure out is if all this talk of SSK’s delivering SF is necessary, or whether some ‘fishing boats’ could be good enough for night time delivery???
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Am out all day tomorrow so play nice but once again, can I thank everyone for a cracking discussion.
I must admit to being ever so slightly swayed by a few of the arguments that maybe there are some remote possibilities, and I think they are remote, that a thoughtful enemy could exploit those vulnerabilities.
Risks are realised when vulnerabilities are exploited by threats so these discussions revolve around those but we also need to factor in likelihood.
However, the first thing we must try and understand is the likelihood of Argentina getting all punchy again and for me, this is our first line of defence. I assume (and would hope) that the apparatus of the UK’s intelligence capability is very well dialled in to intentions down south. This should inform how we assess the threat against what, I again assume, we know full well are our vulnerabilities.
But I would add this, history is littered with instances where intelligence has failed and failed spectacularly so however we assess that intent I would hope there is a wide margin for error.
This brings me on to vulnerabilities
I find it quite difficult to believe that we don’t have a very full appreciation of those vulnerabilities but yet again, history demonstrates that group think and careerism can diminish the chance of a frank admission of vulnerabilities being seriously considered at the table that makes decisions.
If you look for parallels in large industry, especially petrochemicals in the aftermath of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico or Buncefield in the UK, there is evidence that those ubiquitous black swan events, or low probability/high impact events, are being considered very seriously and much investment going that way. This is because conventional risk theory basically failed; it did not take into account the simple fact that even extremely low likelihood events can have a cascading impact that is massive.
I would suggest that despite the likelihood being extremely low, that much we are all in agreement with, there are vulnerabilities that need addressing because the impact to the UK and FI are simply off the chart.
There are many ways to skin a cat and pick any two from four things to do or invest in but given the hot air and blunt sabre rattling I perceive the threat has increased enough to up our defences, even if it was only a quarter notch.
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@James, @APATS: if the RLC are about to set off a whole series of mongo car bombs on the pier, I’d be scared shitless too 🙂
GBAD hunting could be performed by the SF of course. South of MPA, it would be very hard to conceal a Rapier fire unit. Either way, the advantage of a proper port close to the objective would be worth the risk IMHO: vast reduction in time to offload
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@ TD,
fully with you and Sir H (in his original article) on the possibility being low. Maybe only 5%. To my mind, unless I misread others’ comments, we’re all pretty much in agreement on that, and the focus (and fun, and hopefully some new knowledge for all, given the joint nature of contributors) is only on the 5%.
I once had a very wise Squadron Leader (now very sadly rendered almost incapable by a brain aneurysm) who used to take us Troop Leaders running on Salisbury Plain at 1300 on a Friday after he had knocked the rest of the Squadron off for the weekend. He’d run us to some hill, and then lay out a scenario relevant to the ground for debate. He did most of the listening. Occasionally he’d interject:
“Always give your opponent double credit, and always assume your own brilliant plan is half as good as you think it is. And then something will go wrong.”
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@jed: given an assumed height of 300m for the Mount Kent radar, I worked out a 50m out to sea horizon southwards for a low flying aircraft or ship. The other radars are on West Falkland.
Dozens of fishing vessels call at the FI every year
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Ahh the serenity of half 2 in the morning. Good discussion so far.
Re; wf
You’re radar horizon is about spot on if the Kent radar is indeed 300m. You’re looking at (unobstructed) range to the horizon of just under 41nm or 75.6km.
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Re; Fishing Vessels
Don’t forget that they are all licensed by the FI government (a big revenue stream) and generally their time at sea and approximate sailing patterns would be known. That’s also what the River-class are down there for, to go and poke around fishing vessels that draw suspicion. I imagine the other vessels in the area would be very keen to pass on intel about suspicious boats that shouldn’t be there, mainly driven by their own self-interest in having paid quite significant sums for their licenses and not being too keen on having freebie fishermen lurking about.
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Re; Covering the Harbour
I wonder aloud what plans – if any – exist for sweeping the jetty and other potential off loading sites around the Islands with either a well placed machine gun or even just a local with a rather accurate rifle?
It may only prove to be a minor annoyance that causes a few casualties and a brief delay, but combined with enough other measures it could all begin to stack up and give the local defence forces time to get into place.
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Re; Typhoon’s anti-shipping abilities,
I think I’ve brought this up before, but considering the modern trend is for multi-role combat aircraft that are supposed to effectively replace an entire air forces worth of combat planes, should Typhoon not be fitted with some kind of anti-ship weapon, even if only very basic?
By comparison I look at the Swedish Gripen, which has basically been fitted to take just about every kind of ordinance that the Swedes and their allies can get their hands on.
Still if push came to shove, lucky the Typhoons kept those cannons really. Not sure as the pilots would be too happy about having to strafe warships at low level though. Just wondering what ammunition they carry, as something with an incendiary flavour would go down nicely, what with warships and fire not being the best of friends.
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Re; The UN response,
As I’ve suggested before, I think some people give Argentina’s diplomatic corps a little too much credibility. Not that they’re stumbling buffoons or that South America isn’t important in the wider diplomatic sense, but the fact is they’re still a relatively small fish in a big pond and don’t have a UNSC veto as we do. Diplomatically I believe we could tie the situation up sufficiently in our favour.
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Re; Recapture?
Possibly the reason this thread has stayed on track and turned out as well as it has is because this aspect of the whole thing has been left alone. Other than to say that I think we could, this is probably best left alone!
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Chris – I don’t fancy the chances of straffing any Argy warship all of which are fitted with multiple twin 40mm mounts with longer range….. nah, really wouldn’t want to try that.
However they dont have a medium range SAM, so maybe try stand off bombing with laser guided bomb ? Might work the first time until they start manouvering aggressively ??
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Either way, “glad it’s them not me” would be a phrase that I’d apply!
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@James
Your troop com’s advice is one of the reasons I’m skeptical of the chances of the proposed SF insertion. Shit happens. Shit happens even more at night with 40kg.
The worst I would think of for the harbour isn’t car bombs. It’s smoke bombs with some pyrotechnics mixed in. Ever tried forming up a company when you can’t see 2 feet in front of you? Total utter chaos, and all you need is one idiot with an itchy trigger finger to have a hellish case of blue on blue, especially if said company is already so keyed up and expecting contact.
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Yet more interesting detail — Observer, smoke bombs crossed my mind as well, too often underrated by civilian observers (I should know) because confusion kills. Chris B., very good reminder about fishing vessels and the day-to-day rhythms of the (or any) EEZ, probably one of the most useful sources of short-notice intel (the fishermen themselves, more than HMS Clyde despite her crew’s professionalism.) And it occurs to me thorughout this that one of the most useful things military or civil intelligence back home in the UK could’ve been doing for TITSNBN for the last twenty years is regularly hacking the academic records of the Argentine staff colleges for every class, exercise, virtual staff ride (hard to access for Argentines in khaki, I imagine 🙂 and passing-out research paper in which this has been fought and refought. Chris again, one of the many reasons why the Gripen would be a sound gap-plugging investment for a number of armed forces, maybe even including the UK’s. And Jed, yes, with Fast Forties in play, simple and reliable, not really worth showing off your gunfighter skills.
It occurred to me this evening (still evening here, Chris) that maybe we’re skinning the wrong cat. What about an operation focused exclusively on West Falkland? From an Argentine point of view that compasses several things. First, it’s the art of the possible: a “one-island” solution rather than two as pointed out upthread, at least for now, and more Falklands (sorry, Malvinas) soil than AR’s ever possessed. Shorter distances (and I would guess that every nautical mile covered as a factor of time counts), fairly open terrain if you can get up and onto the Hornby range with OPs to watch the Sound. Concentrate the kind of discrete SF operation already mooted here on the two littleish RAF OPs, and on seizure of Port Howard and the Fox Bay airfield (trained ferreting plus Google Earth seems to make it one of the most substantial, besides being a natural waystation to bring in surveillance equipment and light artillery to cover that vulnerable southeastern coastline. Strike low and fast on multiple axes. Confront MPA with the option of scrambling the flight and shooting down aircraft with dozens of Argentine paras in each, or sinking commercial shipping bringing marines ashore in this “limited” operation that doesn’t threaten MPA or the population centres of East Falkland directly — bad optics, dontcherknow — or living with the result. Mix military spearhead with “civilian” Malvinas activists and settlers — internet video of arrival, settlement vlogs, twitter feeds, Facebook support page, the lot, look plucky and plugged-in. As for evicting the rightful citizens of the island who’ve been there since my granddad’s granddad was a rash idea at closing time down the local, well, their number is smaller than the counter lines on the first floor of Selfridge’s on Christmas Eve. And of course, Argentine advocates site everything from the Ulster Plantations to the Partition of India to say “hard cheese” when those folks are deported.
From there, salami tactics. Split the EEZ, push for sovereignty over W.F. as various neighbours (read Brazil and the US) breathe a sigh of relief that this didn’t get bloody and complicated fast like 1982. Build up a substantial garrisoned presence on West Falkland, damn the expense, because there’s considerably more will to pay even from Argentina’s shattered public fisc than massively increasing British presence on East Falkland at the far end of an 8500nm+ logistical tail. Pettifog EEZ negotiations to increase charted distance for freight carriers wishing to avoid the Argentine EEZ and grabbing as many of the better fishing grounds as possible. Salami tactics, the experience of slow decline, discreet opportunities to play both sides of an issue with commercial holdings in oil prospectors in both zones, all seem like ways to get “in the heads” of senior Westminster types. One or two successive Argentine presidets get themselves elected on the updraft of signing off on the operation, and their successors wait until the UK gets tired of paying for Fortress Stanley or another window of operational vulnerability (using a regular tempo of exercises around West Falkland facilities) to stage a coup de main.
James, I’m sure some version of that — the logic and the operational approach (quick action on a secondary target, daring UK forces to “overreact,” securing West Falkland’s natural defences on heights and coves rather than trying to tackle East Falkland’s, etc.) What was the verdict?
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Oh, and TD, you made the right point about the failure of conventional risk theory. This is a good case study to highlight that; I worry that much more broadly than the FI or even purely British security that we’re in for some flocking of black swans in the next 15-20 years (the scale of the 2008 financial collapse, brought on by globally networked incidences of moral hazard and outright fraud that self-organised into a system, and the “Arab Spring” are good examples.)
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I think the Argentinian COG would be the denial of MPA whilst for the UK it would be denial of any abilty of the Argentinians to reinforce the knife fighting Ninjas.
James a jetty may be 300M long but given a quick look at tehe chart and predominant tidal conditions as well as little things like bollards etc I could show you 2 options as to where the Bridge of a ship would be and be within 10 M. Now on all jetties around teh world one of the most common sights is the ubiqutous skip. 2 or 3 skips with a top layer of rubbish and teh rest filled with C4 and scrap metal anf your problem would be where to imprison the survivors.
We have in certain places an armoured remote control Rhibs we use for gunnery practice, now I am not saying anything but USS Cole?
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@ James ‘Are we looking at the same hangars / HAS? There are 4 odd shaped bright white hangars on the northern side of the runway, with taxiways leading from them, and they don’t appear dug in.’
No they are just North of the runway on the E end. About 15 small buildings.
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I had forgotten about those RAF OPs. Does anybody know anything about them without giving too much way?
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RAF observation posts?
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Yes at Mount Alice and Mount Byron on West Falkland.
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@X; thought it was Mt Rosalie and Byron? Big fuck off radars are hardly secret anyway, although RAF Neatishead has a Sov map from 1984 that completely fails to note it’s existence, despite the massive 50m radar dish 🙂
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@jackstaff: the Argies could land in West Falkland, but they couldn’t sustain it unless they contructed an airfield. MPA is a lot closer than the mainland, and the arithmetic works for us in this case. The reason I didn’t want us to extend the existing Stanley airfield is my thinking is that having more than you can effectively defend is foolish. If I was running the strategy back in 82 (well, teenage boys are great strategists!), I would have contructed MPA on the existing airfield site in Stanley. Not that many flights, and close to the FIDF and nosy locals. Much harder to do secret squirrel stuff!
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The 3 RAF amnned radars are at Byron Heights, Mount Alice and Mount Kent.
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@ Wf
It is always an eye opener when you read about what other nations know about each other. Or what steps nations take to keep things secret from their enemies. My favourite is the BT (aka Post Office) Tower being a secret until quite recently. What I wanted to know was have the RPs have any function beyond the obvious which can be discussed without compromising security.
@ All
Somebody said something about the Argentine diplomatic corp being numpties. Though I agree they are numpties the problem is most of the world is run by numpties too who will soak up their bilge.
And we mustn’t underestimate the enemy at home either. Especially in light of Blair’s near treason over a Gib’. Just fell across this looking for something else………
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/anthony-barnett/falklands-rising
Somebody who used to lecture me is regular contributor to the site. One of the reasons why I packed in uni’ when things got difficult at home was it was too much arguing with such stupidity. Makes me blood boil.
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Anyone wanting some good pics and videos to get a feel for the place and some basic info should check this link. http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?169155-Defending-the-Falklands
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Slightly off topic but related to the opendemocracy link X posted …
Are the Argentines searching for oil in their EEZ? Or is there by pure geographical coincidence only oil in the FI’s EEZ?
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@ WW
It isn’t off topic because it is at the heart of the matter isn’t it? I am going off to do a recce.
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@x: what a twat. The Argies are no more entitled to Falklands oil than my neighbour is entitled to half my bountiful vegetable patch (yeah, right!). I want half of AR’s beef. Why? Because I shout about it loudly, that’s why!
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@ APATS
Thanks for the link. It has filled in some holes. Still think a second company is needed. Continued to be more and more impressed with FIDF. Still think HMG needs to provide/loan them something like Viking or even surplus Bulldog. Still not convinced by the talk of guerilla warfare. Great pics of the RPs too for which I am grateful.
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X I agree with you, it would not cost much more to make these conversations pretty academic. Apparently we do not have room to store all teh ehavy equipment we are bringing back from Germany in UK, plenty of room down South. In camp Arifijan in Kuwait there is a car park with a an armoured Brigades worth of vehicles in it, very impressive site.
On a serious note though, maybe a 2nd company, put them on a 4 month rotation instead of 6 weeks. A squadron of CVR(T), a few 105mm guns and an extra couple of helos would make a major difference for not a lot of extra investment.
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@ APATS
Perhaps when A-stan is finished space can be found for the RAF Reg to take over local defence leaving the Army to be a bit more mobile?
I know the experts here say MPA is the CoG but I still think it is Stanley. To that end I wonder if, even though it isn’t the British way, defensive works have been put in place around Stanley? If anybody does know don’t say!!!!!
And vehicles for FIDF aren’t just about mobility it is about being comfortable in the field. They are a hardy bunch but say in a period of heighten tension better to be deployed in a vehicle to an open spot than live in a trench even for a few day. As James and Humph have pointed out all the key positions are known so there is no reason why these vehicles can’t be driven straight into ready prepared hull down positions.
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‘Perhaps when A-stan is finished space can be found for the RAF Reg to take over local defence leaving the Army to be a bit more mobile?’
You’ve set the cat amongst the pigeons now 😉
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@ Topman
Not RAF reg bashing!!!! I think a second company is needed. Pulling a second infantry company out of an infantry battalion doesn’t leave a rump deployable formation. Surely the best solution is to use the Reg capacity from Bastion. Once Germany has gone and Afghanistan has gone what are they going to do? They are not in Cyprus? Perhaps UN work?
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An RAF Regiment Squadron would make sense and they have 7 field squadrons to rotate through.
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@ APATS
Exactly. I am always surprised they can’t be found in Cyprus.
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@x
‘Not RAF reg bashing!!!!’
I know your not, I wasn’t being serious, the mere name can set some off ;-).
I agree with you. Since sqn strength is company sized there size would fit in. Plus it’s there primary task.
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There used to be a Sqn based at Akrotiri, got pulled back to the UK early 2000s (?)
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Post afghanistan we will have an organisation (RAF regt) that has 7 170 strong field squadrons and 3 auxilary squadrons. their prime role is air base Defence. out of all the air bases we possess the only one that may even feasibly expect to be attacked will be MPA. It should be a no brainer.
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Are there 7 now? Must admit I’m not upto date on their numbers, has each Sqn increased in size since they added a couple of Sqns a couple of years ago?
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An RAF Regiment Squadron for MPA and the local AO would make sense, along with the RIC for wider-based tasks. They’ll need more mobility for that though.
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James, The RIC do a fair bit of section sized patrolling on outlying Islands and visits to remoter settlements. Clyde specifically came with a rigid raider on one Davit to allow this and the flight deck is also very useful. The RLC have a couple of LCVPs which allow Landies to be transported though not sure if they could take anything heavier.
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So Viking for RIC? The terrain in places is too much for Land Rover and similar. Viking would allow some gentle swimming too.
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LCVP can transport BV 206 but not Viking due to the extra weight of armour I believe.
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@ APATS, may be a good excuse to purchase a couple of british built (see what i did there) griffon 8200TD although the tech blurb says a max payload of 12t the photos show they can take a viking
http://www.griffonhovercraft.co.uk/
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it’s 8100 not 8200, doh! the media gallery has the best shots of the vikings in the 8000TD and 8100TD. I if (i were buying) would look at the 160/180 series 22 tonnes payload and half deck/half cabin setup so personnel would be under cover (for protection from the weather not bullets)
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@ Paul, not sure if that is a Viking or a BV 206 they are quite difficult to tell apart in a photo unless you see them together, especially from that angle.
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@ APATS,
not really worried about day to day tactical mobility for the settlement visits, which as you say are covered by a few floaty things. I’m more concerned with moving the entire RIC fairly quickly to anywhere that appears to be threatened. If an RAF Regt Sqn is covering MPA (and very well, it’s their main role) then we have an asset (the RIC) that would require a minimum of a battalion to dislodge, but if the entire company cannot get there in time it is not so useful.
2 Chinooks in addition to the existing SKs would do the job. Make sure the RIC has some MANPAD and Javelin and things look up*. Swap out the Typhoon for the FGR versions (probably already planned) and give the RIC an FAC and you’ve got a credible threat to any amphibious operation on either island within 60 minutes. Put a troop of GMLRS onto a piece of hardstanding at MPA and you’ve got some lethal coverage of 90% of East Falkland, including Stanley. No need to buy anything, it’s all in-service and post Afghanistan recovering to the UK.
* they may already have these on their establishment, I’m not fully au fait with the details of what they already have.
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…and four AH-64 into Stanley Airport to double the difficulty Carlos Fandango has in closing down our air capability.
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‘Swap out the Typhoon for the FGR versions’
The ones done there already are. They were very low hours, 2 I think were almost straight off the production line. The maintance procudures, baring any mishaps, means they should be done there for quite a long time without having to come back to the UK.
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@ Topman,
good stuff. Do you know if they practice in the A-G / A-sea role? Got to be current to be credible.
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‘2 Chinooks in addition to the existing SKs would do the job’
Pumas would be a better idea they aren’t in any theatre at the moment so could move down straight away without having to move any lift out of Herrick. Not as good but you could move two down in C17 quite quickly and wouldn’t have to wait until 2015.
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Typhoons deployed to Falklands were the FGR4 variant.
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Quite a useful little FI Battlegroup building up here:
* Clyde-type floaty little boat for inshore duties, leaving the Guard Ship and SSN if present to concentrate on the offshore threat.
* RIC with all arms capability.
* RAF Regt Sqn with running / roaming rights over MPA out to 5 kms. Could probably spare a flight from the 170 all up strength to reinforce the RIC.
* FIDF company.
* GMLRS troop.
* Couple of LCVPs.
* Initial increase in mobility through Puma, longer term to Chinook.
* (When authorised by Garrison Commander and released from interceptor duties, up to 4 FGR-capable Typhoon).
* 4 AH-64 in redundant location.
Needs a C2 element of about 20, commanded by a Lt Col (could rotate to Wg Cdr RAF Regt). We also need to make sure tour lengths are harmonised, to allow for a build up of expertise. But at first glance, that’s looking credible and would give Carlos Fandango a Brigade + sized task.
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Sappers and recce needed, possibly also a comms rear link. Sappers from existing component reassigned to FI BG. Recce platoon from the unit supplying the RIC, and equipped with quads and 1:4 trailer ratio, comms from JCUFI (used to be called, may have changed its’ name)
That’s creating a BG for the price of 300 odd additional personnel, without buying new kit, and more than quadrupling Carlos Fandango’s problem. Good value I think.
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Here is an interesting question then.
Assuming we are not going to be getting a flight of Apache’s and Chinooks (anything rotary costs a fortune) what delivers the maximum uplift in capability for a minimum uplift in cost.
Consider this
1) People are always the main cost
2) Anything that is ‘complex’, especially if it flies, needs lots of people, see item 1
3) Anything too showy would not get past the the sensibility test in terms of escalation and the general political element
4) Cash might be available for capital items but running costs must be minimal, see item 1
5) Consider the terrain and weather, second hand Mastiff’s not likely of much benefit etc
Defence on the cheap is always an interesting challenge and in tune with my general stinginess, how would you do it
Start with the cost of cars not houses, then houses not Mayfair penthouses and then work your way up
Might be worth starting here
http://www.mod-sales.com/
Lets call it a grant aid to the FIDF 🙂
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4cb 90s and 2 king aer shadows.
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@ TD,
if rotary is disallowed, the best mobility enhancer I ever served with was Unimogs. In addition to the flat beds, I see they now have something called a Dingo which has a weapons station (I assume mobility is on a par with the flat bedders, but I have no personal knowledge of that variant).
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Plus, anything that relieves the pressure on what we already have there and/or reduces those running costs is a double bonus and allows the cheque book to open wider.
Eg, Marks suggestion of a couple of King Airs could reduce the flying hours for Typhoons and therefore be sensible in financial terms as well, lets see some robbing Peter to pay Paul going on
Maybe send the job lot of these down there
http://www.mod-sales.com/direct/vehicle/,36,/28682/Supacat_.htm
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In that case TD an a400m with aar capability replaces both the herc and vc10. Possible FITS pallet also included with the a400m
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Bang on Mark, that the kind of thing I was thinking of.
We get an uplift in lift capability, enough AAR, decent ISTAR, maybe even a weapons fit and a reduction in cost, just needs a bit of imagination
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Hovercraft hovercraft hovercraft hovercraft hovercraft
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2011/03/the-amphibious-assault-hovercraft-british-innovation-at-its-best/
Just in case you didnt get that: I say again – hovercraft, hovercraft, hovercraft, hovercraft..
🙂
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PaulG
“I if (i were buying) would look at the 160/180 series 22 tonnes payload and half deck/half cabin setup so personnel would be under cover (for protection from the weather not bullets”
You can easily use some of that 22 tonnes to armour against 7.62mm and shell splinters – Hover APC – add 2 x RWS with a .50 cal and a pair of LMM and Bob’s yer dead Argie uncle……
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Really Like the hover craft it can zip across the mines too. Why have we never sent any down there?
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Hang on TD, you are encouraging aircraft not yet even in service, while setting the original rules as being cheap? If that’s the name of the game, I’m going to think more expensively than 16 Unimogs.
Give us a realistic budgetary limit that the PM might agree to given the political / economic constraints (and a timeline) if he is persuaded of the need to increase overall FI capability. It will be interesting to see how people spend the same amount of money.
Say £X acquisition and 5 years of operating costs total £Y acceptable budget. Assume a round £50K per man per year for manpower costs, whether he or she is light blue, dark blue or green.
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TD I know we said avoid flying things but as we are shifting things around it is worth noting that in Akrotiri 84 Sqn have 4 Griffin HAR 2 helos.They are a very upgraded version of the good old Huey. They perform a variety of roles including SAR but they cannot night winch over the sea and with the withdrawal of the RN squadron which provided a darkness stby SAR capability with their boats a replacement has been considered.
They have top notch avionics including a radar which the RAF say is used as a shipping search radar, can embark 6 or 8 troops and if we went a bit US Vietnam on them would be useful if unsophisticated gun ships.
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@MArk: we did send hovercraft down there. Pre-1982, we had a NP8902 with a pair of small hovercraft. I believe they went out of use by 1980-ish
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A budget of 1 million to bribe officers at HQ’s in Buenos Aires or armed forces bases around the country. Should result in sufficient advance warning of upcoming nasty things. Paid for by the Foreign Office. Cost to MOD is nil. How about that?
Probably already done.
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As we are going bonkers you would be better of with one LCU Mk10 than LCVPs. The Workboat Services ferry would treble your lift in an emergency,
http://www.workboat.co.fk/about/about.htm
The Chinook is a bonkers idea as is AH64. The Falklands terrain is hard going. Even with vehicles the enemy (in large numbers) aren’t going to move far fast. Plenty of time for a Sea King or Puma or a couple of Lynx to drop a team with Javelin and .50cal to fix the enemy, while the helicopters return and get reinforcements. As for AH64 Lynx with TOW better and less likely to upset the neighbours. The South Africans like things named after big cats. 🙂
I thought I was being a bit profligate asking for Vikings or second hand Bulldogs so the FIDF could keep out of the wind and brew up while waiting for Juan Sh*t and his mates to turn up.
I am off to talk to the Indians about some of these………….
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/BrahMos_missile_autonomous_launcher_maquette_MAKS2009.jpg/
Only £5million pound a missile!
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X, Chinook was only withdrawn from the FI in 2006 to free them up for Afghanistan.
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A key driver to remember is this: The Falklands Garrison has remained relatively static for 25 years, and this time has suceeded in its mission of acting as a deterrent.
Given Defence is broke, and that Argentina has not yet acquired any new capability which meaningfully changes or alters the UKs ability to retain control over the islands, what possible reason is there to modify the garrison, at significant cost to the taxpayer?
Remember this – everything that goes down there needs to be supportable, and provided for. Every helo, vehicle type, troop type, weapon type – this needs to be supported, sustained and kept going. Its not a case of flying down 4 new types of vehicles or weapons and saying ‘job done’,but about significantly increasing the logistics tail to support the islands.
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A change is coming Time is fast approaching for vc-10 to head to the boneyard in the sky. Keeping one of our 9 a330 + a herc will be very expensive and unwise. It offers way beyond the aar capability required for a local defence requirement. This is why I suggested a400m. Less personnel less support required and 1 fewer a/c to support.
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That photo thread includes details of an exercise that tested at least three of the scenarios here (infiltration of Stanley, patrol harassment of Mount Pleasant, fait accompli on West Falkland).
for me, thinking about James’ threat scenario, 2 armed Lynx sound very helpful, or even just having one of the resident helis land away every night. Once the denial-party are spotted they’ve got to move, and then they’re not denying anything.
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Sir Humphrey,
a classic answer from your namesake from the Beeb series. “It has worked for the last 30 years Minister, what could possibly go wrong for the next thirty years?” Forgive me if I feel we have winged it for the last thirty years, and in the non-real context of a thinking man’s blog propose some incremental upgrades.
I have kept my suggestions to in-service incremental upgrades. The two I propose as being new (to the FI) have in their favour capabilities that outweigh their logistic cost. GMLRS provides precision, all-weather strike that we do not have, at the cost of about 24 men including maintenance for 3 launchers. AH-64 x 4 provides stand-off attack of vessels beyond the horizon, QRA with a pan-island reach in less than 60 minutes, and the ability to take out a company-sized landing force from 2 platforms in less than a minute. We don’t have that now. The detachment to operate such a capability is about 35 men.
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@wf
“@MArk: we did send hovercraft down there. Pre-1982, we had a NP8902 with a pair of small hovercraft. I believe they went out of use by 1980-ish”
Indeed we did. I knew the pilots who later graduated from the SRN-6 to the BH-7. See http://www.britishpathe.com/video/falkland-islands.
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wf and dunservin cheers nice video. Back to the future then you may say.
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British Pathe is an absolutely brilliant resource
I might do a post on this over the weekend, purely as a fun piece, lets all be armchair general and get the company credit card out
Its a guilty pleasure and makes a nice change from the depressing reality 🙂
An even more interesting thought is how you can do more for less, we spend several hundred million a year to maintain the defences, perhaps the real discussion should be how we can do either more or even the same for less?
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@ APATS
Really? I sit corrected. Better not tell Somewhat that there isn’t a Chinook to land on Dauntless’ flight deck. 🙂
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If personnel is the main driver, the Argentines can’t reach the islands without difficulty, Typhoon (sorry to say) is of questionable utility, and the RAF supposedly has an expeditionary air capability why not remove the majority of the RAF element and just keep a whole infantry battalion down there with a few helicopter and some simple fixed wing (like the Islander) all AAC. If there is a warning of aggression put the RAF expeditionary wing to work to get there tout suite. You could save what 500 or so posts.
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x
Typhoon personnel numbers is around 50 or less hardly a personnel drain. The need to maintain a working airfield I would suggest means the raf stay or do plan to mothball it.
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Cheap defence upgrades? Easy. Give every civilian on the islands surplus rifles ala Switzerland. Throw in a few heavy weapons teams on loan to stiffen the militia up and you got your second company. All they’ll need is ammo to train frequently.
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How do you see them being used if the Argentines started something?
I think the base line here is that the Argentines would struggle to get any planes over the islands and would struggle to put together a sizeable landing force.
So if on the airfront we kept the RPs, Rapier, a few helicopters (SAR, attack, trooping), and a few Islanders (or something a bit more fancy) for MP would the islands be less safer, a lot less safer, or buying Rosetta Stone Spanish courses in bulk?
If personnel costs are the drivers why not replace with the majority of the RAF bods with soldiers? If the Argentines do try something it will be in spite of Typhoon; why engage something you can’t beat and can’t really do much to you. Would HMG sanction Paveway to clear Argentines in Stanley? And if the Argentines are within MPA surely Typhoon is out of the fight? Does it really take 700 personnel to run an airfield?
It seems the worth of airpower and its manpower needs are out of kilter vs worth. Or its worth as I see it. That isn’t to say Typhoon isn’t awesome.
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“Forgive me if I feel we have winged it for the last thirty years”
That is a very strong statement to make. Given there has been no attack on the Falklands, no threat to our sovereignty, and more importantly no change to the potential aggressors ORBAT since 1982 which substantially changes said threat, I’m genuinely struggling to see the need to put scarce resources needed elsewhere into uparmouring islands already adequately defended.
The proof of the issue should surely be that the forces, who are notorious for leaking like sieves, have been deadly quiet on the issue of Falklands defence. When was the last time you saw a leaked paper suggesting upgrading the garrison?
I’m not saying the threat can’t change, nor that it won’t change. I am saying that it is a reasonable planning assumption that we are looking at a multi-year notice of these changes, and that this gives us adequate time to adjust our force levels accordingly.
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@Sir Humphrey: I think James might be exaggerating a tad, but you do exude complacency. Not bothering to read other posts but pronouncing on them all the same doesn’t breed confidence in your opinions.
The Falklands are the only British territory under threat worldwide. It’s only reasonable that, given we now cannot retrieve them due to capability holidays, that we explore ways on ensuring nothing unfortunate happens in the meantime. FI spending is 0.5% of our defence budget. I’d quite happily see that doubled or tripled rather than participate in a Libya, for example: no British territory or subjects are at risk.
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@wf
Actually, it’s not him extruding complacency, but you scaring yourself. The Falklands are an extremely difficult target to take, faced with the limitations of Argentinian forces currently. It”s difficult to see a practical plan succeding to retake the islands.
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@Wstr (going all the way back to the 2nd comment on this post)
I don’t believe the nuclear submarine had any deterrent effect in 1977.
Argentina landed on South Thule in November 1976. We didn’t find out until December 76. We moaned a bit in January 77. It wasn’t November 77 that Callaghan bothered to send Dreadnaught along with Phoebe and Alacrity with RFA support. This was around the time that it was leaked to the British public that Argentina had set up a base on South Thule. In the end, the JOURNEYMAN force did nothing to remove the Argentine presence or prevent resupply (the submarine RoE was run away if attacked.
So Argentina had more than a year to invade the Falklands had they seen fit to do so! And in the end, it showed a complete lack of willingess on our part to actually do anything.
Not sure about the 82 press release cock up either. Argentina assumed we dispatched a nuclear submarine in response to the scrap workers landing on South Georgia on 19 March. That was what triggered them to bring forward the invasion and complete the preparations in under 14 days (how long they thought they had until a nuclear submarine arrived).
Spartan didn’t leave Gibraltar until around 29 March -1 April. Splendid sailed from Faslane at the same time.
Spartan was the first to the reach the area on 12 April. The same day the Maritime Exclusion Zone was declared.
Yet on 6 April, an Argentine Army regiment was airlifted into the Falklands – the seas no longer being considered safe for transport ships. The same day, Argentine newspapers were reporting sightings of a submarine off the Argentine coast. ‘Vulcan 607’ implies it was a Soviet submarine.
Presumably an attempt to bluff by claiming the presence of a submarine in the area would have been too obvious – there being no reason in for the Royal Navy to routinely have a submarine there pre-82 (even in light of 77).
Had Argentina known our actual response to South Georgia, they probably wouldn’t have bothered to bring the invasion forward but carried on with the soft invasion, completely unopposed later in the year. So perhaps, ironically, the SSN threat did deter the right invasion but provoked the wrong invasion (from Argentina’s PoV)!
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Sir Humphrey, You say, scarce reources neede elesewhere but eith the draw down in Germany and the withdrawal from Afghan the fact is we are actually struggling to find homes for the army and its equipment from Germany.
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Sir Humphrey,
There was a strong recommendation for some upgrades in 2002, but other commitments in sandy places were at that point in time more pressing. That was the reality then, and has been for the last ten years. Hence the winging it comment. As our commitments elsewhere in the world wind down, maybe it is time to re-examine.
The case for a roulement RAF Regiment Squadron is particularly strong. Airfield defence is their raison d’être. MPA is the only British airfield in the world remotely under threat. There are 7 Squadrons. If they don’t take their 1 in 7 tour, what is the rationale for maintaining the RAF Regiment at all? What else are they going to do apart from hang around consuming resources?
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James, agreed and Politically the RAF Reg are there as airfield Defence, the Army would simply be rotating units through the Islands to take advantage of the training opportunities.
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Some more interesting comments – let me see if I can try to shake off the accusation of ‘complacency’ though.
From where I sit, my personal view (please note this is a strictly personal view) is that some posters here are getting very hungup on meeting the military response to a threat scenario generated in part by people working to a 10yr old issue and also having looked at what they perceive now, based on a review of OSINT and ORBATS to be the key gap.
Now, the issue here is fundamental – ‘what has changed to the threat of the islands to warrant an upgrade?’ This is really important because that is the first question that will be asked by Ministers when presented with the MINSUB wanting to know why they are risking an international row.
We have to look at the wider political dimensions to the Falklands- we saw with Dauntless how routine rotations can lead to unnecessary international rows over an arms race in the region, which end up placing us on the spot, and damaging our relations with the region. As I noted, we need good relations in the region, and deploying a 10-25% increase in the garrison, plus massively upgrading it is a really easy way to play straight into Argentine hands, reduce the willingness of Latin American nations to give us port / airport access, and may further strengthen economic measures about the islands. It would also have wider implications on our foreign and defence policy, and hurt our economy too – as I said in the article, the UK response needs to be moderated because we are there for the long haul, and the last thing we need to do is annoy all the locals.
It would be extremely difficult to justify a major force uplift at the moment. Look beyond the rhetoric and you’ll see that nothing has changed in Argentinas ability to present a clear military threat to the islands. So, an upgrade places the UK in a weak diplomatic position, threatens our relations with South America (which we take increasingly seriously) and gives the Argentines the moral high ground. This is in order to bolster a force already scaled and equipped to mount a robust defence until the wartime reinforcements arrive.
I’m not saying that uplifts shouldnt happen, but that we need to consider this beyond just the straightforward ORBAT comparisons – real life doesnt work like that, no matter how much we wish it did. If the threat changes, then you could (theoretically) see changes to the force structure to reflect this. But, and this is the point I keep coming back to, the threat has not materially changed in 30 years. It is not an unreasonable assumption to make that any build up in forces or capabilities would take time, and that this would trigger I&W, enabling a response in appropriate time.
One point on the RAF Regt – they are fully committed to UK duties and HERRICK. There isnt the flex there to add them in to bolster the garrison without utterly breaking their op tempo. HERRICK is the Departments main effort, and the focus will remain there.
Post 2015 the issue is not going to be a surplus of troops or equipment – expect to see rapid drawdowns in UOR kit not going to the core programme, and as people leave with the army drawing down in size to 82000. This, coupled with a 5 year period in which people need to reorganise, recuperate and retrain (in theory) prior to Force 2020 kicking off means any ‘MEGA GARRISON’ is highly unlikely to emerge.
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While the frequent rotation of troops and routine training in the Falklands sounds like a nice idea, what about the logistical burden it lays on the Army? Even if you had a one in four rotation per year, you’re flying a company twice across the ocean (once there for the new company, once back for the ones finishing). And these things cost with regards to fuel and maintainance after a long flight. Shipping them there takes too long. And why should the Army train in Falklands when there are many other more accessible (aka cheaper) training sites available?
Still think the current core of “citizen’s defence” is the way to go with regards to soldiers, if only for the fact that they live on the Islands and don’t need to be shipped back and forth.
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Sir Humphrey, you argue that threat has not changed and yes fundamentally it has not. the Garrison however has actually been down graded over the last 30 years despite the threat not changing. Now if that is not status quo allowing complacency to creep in I do not know what is.
I am very sorry but operations do not occur within the UK. The only assets in the UK that cannot be guarded by the MOD Police and MPGS who are responsible for armed security at UK RAF facilities are those attached to the Nuclear detterent which are protected by FPGRM.
Yes they are busy in Afghanistan however they are deploying 1 squadron from 7 to an op that has a scheduled end date. 5 years to recover from that?
As for a mega garrison? The protection of Mount Plesent International Airport(what teh sign on the gate says!) will become the responsibility of the units designed to do the job. Any army companies using the training areas are there training. Chinook would be terurned to teh FI after its withdrawal in 2006. A total uplift of under 200 people.
Considering the current Govts stance on Libya and teh fact it is actually considering ground ops in Somalia I think you underestimate the political will that exsists.
P.S. Do you still see the South America intel briefs? Or are you assuming the threat has not changed based on OSINT?
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Observer, the RIC currently rotates every 6 weeks!
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I have read that the FI are just about the best training area there is. Tricky terrain, lots of space, amenable locals, few low flying restrictions etc.
Bearing in mind Sir Humphrey’s warnings about escalations, if a small one was needed a “training flight” of 4 Apaches would be handy. Not very aggressive as they cant fly far, and there purely to avail the AAC of low flying (without power lines…ahem) and the AAC and RIC with air/ground co-ordination training. Rotate crews in frequently etc to maintain that they are just there for training, but one hell of an asset for Carlos to think about.
As for the SF and Mare Harbour brigade plan….it might just work, but more likely you are going to end up with 24hr news showing cold, muddy SF guys being marched into MPA, and the RIC sitting on shore looking at a beached ship full of embarrassed Argentinian soldiers. Some nice shots of “our boys” offering them lots of tea and being insufferably polite, and the Argies looking aggressive and incompetent.
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@APATS
There goes the budget! 😛
I’m with Sir H on the fact that Argentina still does not have the sealift needed to land a brigade on the island in face of opposition, all the talk of civilian ships stuffed with troops aside, it may be practical in a routine deployment, but incredibly risky deploying a liner into what is essentially going to be a hot warzone.
As for upgrading, think the simplest and cheapest would be to give the permanent unit on the Island – the FLDF a greater percentage of heavy infantry weapons. This can slide under the radar, so less diplomatic accusations of starting an arms race in the region, infantry weapons getting less attention than a very photogenic MRLS. More LMGs/GLs per section would be a very nasty surprise to someone not expecting it, and a reorganised section of 81mm motars along the lines of field artillery can cause serious havoc if an aggressor were to mistake a section as 2 tubes instead of actually a 6-“gun” section 3x normal size.
Think they can get by with a small stock of ATGMs, any first wave attacker would be mainly amphibious with lighter armour, the MBTs would be after a beachhead is secured, so more LAWs and training to take out that initial “surge”.
On second thought, use LAWs for the armour, save the ATGMs for close range anti-ship work. The Norwegians use the Spike as as AShM, so did the Israelis and it worked quite well.
Less costly than MLRS, more concealable upgrades and permanently on the island, not transfered in and out with units.
What do you guys think. (I’m going to regret asking that…)
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@Sir Humphrey: “we saw with Dauntless how routine rotations can lead to unnecessary international rows”? We know the Dauntless deployment is entirely normal. Ditto Prince William arriving for 6 weeks, all SAR pilots go there. The “international rows” are manufactured by AR: we are being probed. It’s interesting to see that these rows post-date our withdrawal of Harrier…
While sanctioning other S America countries is counter productive for the reasons you state, doing the same to Argentina is just sensible. If they interfere with Falklands-flagged vessels landing rights, bring a WTO case. If they make a habit of hanging around the limits of territorial waters, arrange a public SSN visit. James’s idea of deploying battalions 3-4 times a year for field firing has obvious merit. Reinforcing the Typhoon’s at MPA twice a year has training value too. Furthermore, the longer such a pattern of behaviour goes on, the harder it is for anyone to claim we are “escalating”.
“International opinion” is actually the opinion of politicians and lobby groups, not countries. South American countries took almost no notice of the Falklands War from the point of trade, and anecdotal evidence is that the UK’s position improved after the war.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/8973147/Once-again-Britain-must-show-Argentina-that-it-is-a-serious-nation.html
Countries and peoples respect those who defend their interests. No one will respect a country who elevates other countries opinions above those of it’s own people
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@ Sir Humph re RAF Reg
We have all been saying AFTER AFGHANISTAN.
@ Mark re Typhoon
They are there to defend the radar sites aren’t they?
@ Observer
There are too many alternatives with all this. A brigade is a stretch. But if they land a good sized force, say a weak battalion, where is the UK force to dislodge it? What if they do seize Mare or Stanley and just sit there? Now unless they had been clever about supply you could say you sit and wait for them to run out of food or water. But what if this action is part of coordinated broader effort of feints and “stunts”? As I keep saying the Argentines don’t have to win anything. They need is Cause célèbre to present to the UN. Actually a bloody defeat might play into their hands. Lots of fresh hi-def pictures of young Latin males in captivity surrounded by white faces.
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@x
First, they have to LAND the bloody battalion and not get whatever ship they were on shot-ridden or motar bombed, torped, mine-stricken or simply ATGM-ed.
Second, if they just sat there, you have a very good case of “home intrusion” and “foreign invasion” to bring to the UN. It works both ways, public opinion.
All the “what ifs” can’t change the fact that they got nothing solid to work on. What if they called in their new allies from space? What if they invented teleportation? Keep going that way and you might as well surrender the UK to them as well, especially since they hired Superman!
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@wf
“Countries and peoples respect those who defend their interests. No one will respect a country who elevates other countries opinions above those of it’s own people”
Can you tell this to the Malaysian and Indonesian government? They seem to turn red and start frothing at the mouth whenever we make claims like that. And increase the number of death threats…
Or maybe your response predictor needs a bit more work…
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@ Sir Humphrey,
your arguments make Whitehall sense. I’ve found often in 30 years of working to Whitehall but not in Whitehall that there are other equally valid perspectives. As we have demonstrated – inadvertently – on dozens of occasions in history, in political, diplomatic, economic and military domains what seems an eminently sensible and a balanced judgement in Whitehall is very often in real life a disaster either happening or in the offing. I’ll bet that John Nott had some very reasonable Sir Humphrey type arguments put to him by the civil service in 1980 before his heroically inept Defence Review.
While I agree with 90% or more of your original analysis, I don’t agree that some incremental upgrades in defensive capability would ruin our diplomatic position. There’s very little we could do – apart from walking away leaving the keys in the door – that would make Argentina happy, so sod them. The other nations of South America have their own tensions with Argentina, and are unlikely to get very perturbed by an RAF Regiment Squadron – whose demonstrable use is to defend airfields – arriving on the scene. It is transparent to the world that we maintain sizeable forces with a global footprint, and that occasionally we reconfigure them. The end of our commitment to Afghanistan is another opportunity. We send forces to train in Canada, Brunei, Australia, Kenya and so on on a regular basis. A training base in the Falklands is a reasonably cost-effective way of maintaining our ability to project power. If carefully explained to interested nations, we could use the opportunity to iron-clad our defence of the islands while appearing completely reasonable.
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good for training in our winter, my boxing day suntan at stanley races can testify for that!!! vice versa i suppose being able to do snow training in july is handy for refresher training as well. fixmas, the falkland islands christmas is in july, (well it used to be)
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@ Observer
When I used the word bloody I was using the adverb in its correct dictionary sense as in “Covered, smeared, or running with blood.” not as a swear word.
As for public opinion runs both ways well the UK’s political capital on the world’s stage is in decline. While the political capital of China, Brazil, India, etc. etc. is on the rise. The US is turning away from Europe. And the EU for all the talk of unity won’t be much of concrete help. If you mean by public you mean the UN, well nearly every the UN votes on the FI. The general feeling amongst the majority is that there is an issue to discuss which in UN terms means the UK giving up something. Third World state always trumps First World ex-colonial power.And the UK always manages to put the kybosh on proceedings by sleight of hand and by expending political capital (read UNSC membership and veto) as I said something of which we are running short on year after year.
“Can you tell this to the Malaysian and Indonesian government? They seem to turn red and start frothing at the mouth whenever we make claims like that. And increase the number of death threats…”
So it is all right for you to be worried about your little island but not for us to be worried about ours? 😉 🙂
As for “what ifs” well as a military man you will know one of the great innovations of modern warfare was the invention of “war staff” who do spend a lot of time playing “what if”. I don’t hold with ideas of an Argentine Iwo Jima-esque storming up the beaches style invasion as they are silly. I do know they are cunning tw*ts. And it is easy to conjure up scenarios where they could have UK forces down there running around in circles. Further this whole forum is about “What If”. And if the topic isn’t worth discussing why would TD host it, and the likes of Sir Humph and James spend a lot of time and effort on posts. Are they doing it out of ego? “Look at us we have a worn a green suit and carried a rifle aren’t we clever!!!” No!!! They are discussing it because it is worth discussing. Finally some of us post here more for entertainment. As I have said many times if we talked about bland boring reality all the time it wouldn’t be worth it.
PS: Where those militia comments above a joke or were you being serious?
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@x
The “others will always side the poor natives vs the big bad colonial” is a load of bull. That’s just your matyr complex talking. Frankly, if the UK just kept quiet and ignored the whole nonsense, the results would have been the same. Many countries do see that the Argentinians don’t have a legal leg to stand on with regards to the Falklands. In fact, trying to defend the Argentinian position would actually be the credibility drain, not defence of the status quo.
“So it is all right for you to be worried about your little island but not for us to be worried about ours? ”
Nope, your original premise was that if you stood up to x,y or z, they’ll respect you for it. Practical evidence shows that if you hindered someone from what they want, the response isn’t respect, it’s anger and violence, no matter how unresonable the original demand was. So I’d say your original premise was flawed.
And was there sonething wrong about the milita that I should know about?
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Sometimes the abstract wins out over realpolitik.
I am always worried when the word “legal” is used in discussions regarding international relations. In the anarchic nation state which is the current paradigm of international organisation all sovereign states are equal there is no over arching authority. That is the position you have to start from. States may subject themselves to international treaties and conventions, they can leave treaties and conventions, and they can still be a party to treaties and conventions and choose to ignore them. But “international law” as a something that exists like domestic laws within the borders of country doesn’t exist. You can’t bound by statute one state over an other. And precedence (judicial law) on an international level can’t exist either unless states choose to be bound. “International law” is an abstract not concrete. If it were concrete were wouldn’t need armies.
As for what I said about your little island I was joking. Note the 🙂 😉
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Oh, so the International Court makes decisions based on dice throwing? While I’m aware that International Court mediations are essentially 3rd party mediations and can be non-binding, they still do make decisions based on rule of law and precedence and the Falklands have been claimed and settled long before Argentina started sticking their oar in. In terms of “effectives” (term used to show control and rule over territory), the UK has such a massive lead over Argentina that any vote going the other way is an incredible oddity which denys history, law and precedence.
Island joke or not, the point that your original premise is flawed still stands, hinder people and you more often than not get anger and hostility, not respect.
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I think you are wading into waters that are a bit too deep. Go away do a semester or 5 at uni’ on an IR course and then we will talk. I come here for a chat and to learn about military stuff not to educate you.
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Come on guys, we have had 300 odd interesting and informative posts without any personal arguments.
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“Come on guys, we have had 300 odd interesting and informative posts without any personal arguments”
Precisely. We are well overdue.
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@Lewis
Ref. ’77 I can’t remember if it was Adm Anaya or Lombardo who gave an account after the war. But is was said that Anaya wanted to maintain an overall momentum and double-down on Britain’s weak response over Thule in ’76, but was making little traction (it was only the Junta’s 2nd year in power and they had other priorities). Back-channels were used to announce an SSN had departed ahead of Op Journeyman task force in case they reacted to its sending. Lombardo then head of the Argentine sub arm (would be CNO had chief architect in ’82) was asked if at any point (i.e not necessarily in the month of Dec ’77) his SSKs could locate and prosecute a British SSN and he emphatically stated that they could not. That put paid to a early capitalisation on Britain’s non-action and ensured the presence, or lack of, an SSN would be a key factor in their future planning. It’s impact on Argentine planning at the time I think qualifies it as at least offering a measure of deterrence from ’77-82.
Ref. ’82 you are quite correct, following South Georgia the invasion force was already at sea when they were informed that a sub had departed. It would have been better if I had written that it clarified and justified sticking to their accelerated timeframe, esp after they had been delayed by bad weather en-route and had to hurry up.
If I wasn’t clear the report I was referencing was the mistaken deployment not the actual ones. A UK paper reported that HMS Superb that was leaving Gib for the UK was instead heading for the S. Atlantic. The MoD knowing/or-believing the effect it had in ’77 encouraged the idea by not correcting it (against FCO advice). The resulting April 6 airlift you mention was a direct reaction to the press report, as the date given by the Argentine embassy for HMS Superb’s deployment was March 25th (back-dated after the incorrect story was published). Thus the April 6th cutoff was calculated on the basis the sub would be on station in 12 days.
I am in no way suggesting that SSNs are the sole answer to the Falklands defence but they are a key trump card. War-game ‘what ifs’ can endlessly play around with overwhelming Type45 and Typhoon (or preventing the latter from getting airborne) but Argentina’s minimal ASW capability means it is the only asset that they have no arguably no real chance of conventional countering – assuming the UK gets enough warning to deploy, as they can’t stay there 24/7!
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@x
You learnt your International Relations from a study guide? That explains it.
Try living next to 2 potentially hostile neighbouring countries who have periodically made threats to crush your country and it goes from being theory and a potential reexam paper to something a lot more important.
Don’t worry about educating me, I’ll treat this as me educating you.
If countries and people respect those who defend their interests, why, the Arabs must really respect the Israelis.
…..
…….
Right…..
And “I love you” in Arabic is “DIE, DIE, DIE!!!”. 😛
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@Observer: oh, they respect the Israelis all right. They hate them because like the Argentines, they are are really, really crap at running their own countries this embarrasses them no end.
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That and the Palestinian displacement problem. The people in that region still think along racial lines, so they really do identify with the displaced.
Interesting thing. People in different parts of the world actually have different thought processes that they are inculcated to think in. That is why people think suicide bombers are nuts, but actually there is a logic behind it, it’s just a bit convoluted to follow as we don’t normally think in those terms.
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Not so sure they really give a toss about the Palestinian refugees: in most Arab countries are either second class citizens, restricted to camps, or both. Did we restrict Ugandan’s to camps when they came over as refugees to the UK after Idi Amin?
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I agree re suicide bombing. It’s perfectly logical if you think you’re going to get 72 virgins, entry into heaven *and* money for your extended family. It becomes nuts when society venerates death over life. The tree of freedom may need to be watered by blood every now and again, but it’s nuts to think this is a great career choice.
You should read Trusted Mole, by a British Army Bosnian veteran. He mentions “necrowar” quite a lot, even mentioning his grandmother who lived in a hovel in Serbia all her life, accepting cash donations from her son in the UK, using them to build…a large mausoleum, into which she was to be placed in after her death 😦
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@wf
That’s true normally, it’s something like the homeless or beggers. When we really meet them, we try to avoid them as much as possible, but read in the papers of Mr X,Y and Z beating up homeless and we get all hot under the collar.
Same with them, they meet real Palestinians, it’s like meeting lepers, but read about how country X has treated them badly, they get all fired up about it.
Anger of the abstract, shunning of the reality.
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@wf
Re: Suicide bombing.
At least the retirement benefits are good. 🙂
71 Virgins. And your wife behind you with a rolling pin. lol
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@Observer: no saying what sort of virgins. Chances are, some old maids with a big moles on her noses, bad breath and a worse attitude. At that rate, you’d be praying for the wife to get there with the rolling pin ASAP…
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Well, he should have wondered how they were virgins until they died. lol
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Oddly, no one has commented on the title of the article, which is about can we recapture the islands (again), having lost them (again)? Clearly, we could in 1982, so that’s a baseline of sorts. But both protagonists have seen their capabilities go up and down since 1982.
Personally, I think in a purely military sense we don’t quite have enough to hold on to them if Argentina gets a workable plan together (and there’s been some very good debate in the 300 odd posts above), hence my desire for some incremental upgrades in capability. But of more interest is what would / could we do to recover the islands, if lost? Would we try? Could we do it?
With the equipment we have now, with the forces deployed as they are now, I don’t think we could mount another task force. That’s why, from my perspective, it is a “stitch in time” measure to add some upgrades to the Garrison, to make sure that we don’t lose them to start with. In 2020, we’ll have more capability (CVF, JCA, more T45s and Astutes, etc) and we should have less commitments and so more forces to generate. But if we lose the islands in 2012, are we going to mount a task force in 2020? I don’t think so.
Until 2020, we have (I’d like to say we face, but in reality no one in the MoD is actually addressing…) a trinary choice:
-1: Start negotiating / hand over the keys.
0: Status quo (aka the Sir Humphrey option). In this option, it is unlikely but not impossible that Argentina could take the islands by force.
1: Some incremental upgrades to make it not possible for Argentina to successfully take the islands by force under any reasonable scenario.
What is the cost delta between 0 and 1? Not that much. What is the cost of recovery of the islands? Vast, not only in treasure but in lives on both sides.
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James, very good point but I had read the point of the article as the reality of Argentina recapturing the Islands. Agree with you though ref our abilty to do so without organic air cover.
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Actually James, the article title is nothing to do with us recapturing the islands, but someone else instead. Methinks you’ve misinterpreted!
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@ Sir Humphrey,
clearly, it’s your article, so I’ll acknowledge your interpretation. But, simple soldier me, “The reality of the challenges involved in recapturing the Falkland Islands” sort of implies we’ve lost them, our political masters say “get them back”, and the plans cell in Northwood goes into overdrive with a pretty bare store cupboard.
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The plans cell probably just goes to the pub. There’s nothing else to do unless we do some serious special ops on the AR airforce: Entebbe and Western Desert SAS combined
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James- If you want to go off on something about recapture by the UK, then thats your call. I’d point out to you that the article is nothing to do with the problem of the UK losing the islands, was not written that way, was not intended to be seen that way, and has nothing to do with that line of thinking. In other words, its not my interpretation about the title – its my article, I know what its about, and I know what its not about because I wrote it, and I know that you are so far off course with your interpretation as to not even be on the same ocean!
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@Sir Humphrey: the title just suggest a recapture operation by the UK because we assume that the Argentinians would *invade*. Sorry we didn’t realise that the MOD is even now planning for lawsuits filed by a future invasion force from AR and doesn’t want to prejudice any future legal actions 😦
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Gents,
If you want to go off on this course, discussing nuances not related to the subject because it suits your interpretation, then crack on. I’m afraid that this is the point at which my interest in this discussion ends, as it is nothing to do with the article at hand and utterly misses the point of the article in question!
I’d suggest a more sensible approach would be to draft a counterpoint article, looking at how to achieve such a recapture, rather than dragging what has until now been an intelligent conversation off down a side alley which is going from a discussion on the current reality, into a deeply theoretical fantasy conversation which has managed to see the UK lose the islands.
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…unless you think that “recapturing” is a verb to be applied from an Argentinean perspective? That’s pretty solid FCO type of thinking.
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Sir Humphrey,
my latest post predated your reply to my earlier post – but that’s children for you. You get distracted half way through a reply. Clearly, your later post makes my latest post redundant.
But it is the title of the article – maybe TD’s choice not yours. It does not make it an irrelevant question though.
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Hmm… interesting question. How to recapture the Islands if taken…
Personally, my take would be to invade Argentina. 🙂
Insane as it may sound, it has a few pluses.
1) Larger area of operations. It is a much bigger playing field than the Falklands, so much harder to fortify all the chokepoints.
2) The “ARE THEY NUTS!!??” factor. People will assume an invasion to retake the Falklands, not a direct attack on Argentinian soil. The surprise factor may catch them wrongfooted on the strategic sense.
3) A very pointed reminder than next time they go adventuring, their own homes can be the price they pay.
4) The US can be used as a rear staging area instead of the Accension Islands, much more convenient and it might be possible to get more air support out if aerial refueling is used.
5) Less collateral damage to British property.
6) More likely to get El Presidente’s ass kicked in elections if it was seen that her policies led to an invasion of Argentina.
There are cons too of course:
1) Bigger enemy reserve.
2) Problem of partisans.
3) The SA region might see it as an escalation of war to the continent main itself and a large part of the South Atlantic is going to be hazardous to health for a while..
4) Stretch of British amphibious capability, but this is 50/50, you’ll need this if you wanted to storm the Falklands too.
Objectives would be to storm and grab as much Argentinian land as possible, then call for a ceasefire and a trade of occupied land.
Workable?
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@ James
How is the cereal stock level situation?
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Observer,
“Workable”
I don’t think so, on a whole spectrum of judgements from purely military to “world political pariah” status. However, get DominicJ to work up a plan on a par with his Murmansk “they didn’t see that one coming” line of thinking and it will still be, umm, unworkable.
X,
sorted for E’s and wizz (or whatever they put into the tearaways’ cereal these days). It is also my cooking day tomorrow, which means quite rare beef and lots of veg for lunch, and in a nod to my Jointery, Cheesy Hammy Eggy for me and the children tomorrow evening. Mrs J turns her nose up at CHE and will probably eat cottage cheese and ryvita, but we love it.
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@ James re E’s
“Love-leeee” as the song goes.
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@James
As I said, it seems loopy at 1st glance, but think it through, they have a huge coastline and massive internal holdings to defend with only 100,000 men, their main attention would be focused on the south where they would be concentrating troops for the expected counterattack, a fair chunk of the force will be stuck on the Falklands fortifying the place against an attack that would not come. You’ll need massive troop lift for the op though. Might have to beg, borrow or steal a few ships..
It’s high risk I’d admit, but might be better than attacking an enemy fortified on an island with only 2 approaches to land forces. Killzone?
As for political pariah, I doubt it, this would be in response to aggression against british soil, protest against it and countries would be protesting against their right to defend themselves.
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I have to say I agree with James (Feb 24 10.34pm).
You cannot say that because the FI haven’t been invaded in the last 30 years that proves they have been ‘successfully defended’.
They haven’t been invaded because the people in Argentina haven’t had the rush of nationalistic blood to the head, to make them try. Whether the islands’ defences would withstand an invasion is yet to be proved.
I also agree with the comment that someone made, that an invasion doesn’t necessarily need to succeed militarily to be successful politically. As long as no civilians are harmed, any action that results in lots of Argentinean dead in comparison to the hopefully light number of British loses, is going to be portrayed around the world as the nasty British killing innocent patriotic Argentineans.
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The idea that an Argentine invasion attempt could succeed does sound like complete fantasy.
But I’m not objecting to the individual operations by the Argentine forces – yes they would require a lot of luck but that doesn’t make them impossible.
My objection comes from the assumption that such an operation would be a complete surprise. Something this big would leak (it did last time, we just ignored the warnings), if only because the people planning it would regard the whole enterprise as madness – and hope that by leaking it, the plan would be abandoned.
The whole thing revolves around reinforcement of any Argentine operation. This has to be by air or sea.
With only a vague notion of impending threat, the British could add extra missile batteries within a few miles of the runway with their own self contained defences. The Argentine force could never knock them all out. Thus the British stop any reinforcements getting in by air.
If the Argentine Navy was stupid enough to sortie, it would be sunk in a single day by a submarine previously deployed to the area.
The Argentine Navy may well try to test British preparedness by landing special forces by submarine and then taking them off again just to show they can do it. Risky though – the British might well consider this an act of war and sink the submarine (I would).
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