Lord West suffers from same stupidity currently afflicting Argentine governemnt

An interesting piece of news this week from the Times.

Ex First Sea Lord, Lord West and his ex naval chums have written an indignant letter to the times expressing their fear that the current cuts in the Navy as a result of the Strategic Defence Review, would mean that "Newly valuable Falklands and their Oil Fields, for the next 10 years at least, Argentina is practically invited to attempt to inflict a national humiliation on us".

Are indeed Lord Wests fears justified? Is a future war with Argentina in the next 10 years likely?
....Hardly.

Lord West and others are basing the entire reason for not cutting the Navy on distinctly flawed military logic:

1. That the Argentine military and government are capable of launching an invasion, both politically and militarily.
2. That the British deterrent force is incapable of resisting an Argentine invasion.
3. That because of the above point, an expedition force with harriers and carriers will be needed to re-take the islands.
 
To begin with, Lord West has not consider the most obvious flaw in his argument: the capability of the Argentine armed forces.

In the 30 years since the Falklands war, the Argentine military has not recovered from the thumping it received in 1982, it has been since a shadow of its former self, it has reduced all its land, air and sea considerably, they now only have about 10 heavy lift aircraft (C-130 Hercules), half of which do not work, and one seaborne landing platform (ARA Bahia San Blas). The majority of its land forces although now professional volunteers, are chronically underfunded to the point where although on paper it is stated as having 70,000 men under arms, they barely have enough money in the coffers to pay for the training of 40,000, they also only have enough ammunition for about 20 hours of combat, half the attack aircraft don't have enough parts to be airworthy (None of the Super Etendard Exocet missile platforms have flown since the war) and the Air-force now only has 2 airbases within striking distance of the islands, these are now also fully dedicated search and rescue stations and logistic facilities for the Argentine garrison in Antarctica.

On top of that, there is just no stomach for round two in Argentina, both politically and militarily, the prospect of potentially losing another round would ultimately sink any prospect of getting somewhere in the sovereignty dispute and destroy forever the reputation of any Argentine govt stupid enough to consider such a proposal, and I can't even begin to imagine what the international fall out would be, especially among Latin American neighbours.

Thus we get onto our second point, although the UK military has shrunk, the capability has been upgraded significantly, but more importantly is the significant changes to defence in the Falklands:

British forces South Atlantic (as they are now called) now boast powerful ground, sea and air assets, which is a significant capability upgrade from the understrength Royal Marine detachment and local TA unit (the Falkland Islands Defence Force, who were useless overall) which jokingly was referred to as garrison in 1982, and unlike the garrison in 1982, todays garrison can get reinforced in under 18 hours by air, quite a change from 3 weeks sailing back then! Not only that Britain now employs significant intell assets in the region, from listening posts to radar domes, quite simply it would be very hard for Argentina or any other potential hostile to mount a significant enough force to take the islands without being spotted and the garrison reinforced significantly.

Quite simply the current state of the Argentine armed forces and their very very limited transport and landing capabilities could not enable them to take on the current garrison, even if they gained a foothold on remote West Falkland they would have to rely entirely on parachute drop and a ship every 24 hours, whereas the garrison at mount pleasant would be getting reinforced constantly every 18 hours by heavy lift. Even in the most apocalyptic scenario, Venezuelan involvement, would begin and end badly, any build up of Venezuelan air sea and land assets would not go unnoticed, and even the Venezuelan military has equally diabolical transport and logistic capability.

On the final point, it is indeed very poor military thinking from an experience military man to suggest that we are going to need carriers and harriers, to retake the islands because the garrison will fall in the next 10 years, not because we have significant air sea and land assets in the islands now, but because we have scrapped our carrier capability?

Really Lord West? a political and militarily impotent half arsed medium rate country is going to launch an invasion against the Falklands, which are now bolstered by jet fighters, artillery, a destroyer, Rapier missiles, an attack submarine, radar domes and several infantry companies.......based solely on the premise we no longer have any carriers and harriers?

It is a wonder Lord West kept his job for as long as he did.