25th anniversary of the Falklands War

Originally Posted by zovat

I remember the time well - I was (along with most of my school - I was 12 at the time) glued to the TV at every opportunity, as I was at a military school we all knew someone who's dad was on that ship, or in that unit etc.


As to it being Maggie's saving grace, it was, but the fact remains that she took some hard decisions, and understood (and publicly acknowledged) the risk to both the service personnel and her own political future.

It did turn her public image around, but as already stated - she didn't chose the timing, she just chose to defend British subjects, on a British territory.

I have met a couple of Falkland Islanders, and they will never forget the sacrifice made by those service personnel in their name.

They are more proud of being British than a large proportion British people living in Britain will ever be.

The sad thing to see is that we could not mount such an operation as things stand, we don't have the naval resources or the troops (with all the other engagements we are involved in).

Had the fleet not already been downsized a lot by the Falklands? That was what triggered the incident in the first place?

[zovat]

Originally Posted by Damien

Had the fleet not already been downsized a lot by the Falklands? That was what triggered the incident in the first place?

It had indeed - a number of ships were taken out of mothballs, and civvie ships re-configured as troop carriers.

The main difference is that we don't even have the capacity to get ships out of mothballs now - most of them were either junked, or sold off.

How many ships do we have then, Didnt we buy/build a boat load (haha!) of new submarines?

Originally Posted by zovat

It had indeed - a number of ships were taken out of mothballs, and civvie ships re-configured as troop carriers.

The main difference is that we don't even have the capacity to get ships out of mothballs now - most of them were either junked, or sold off.

The question is, were it necessary to recapture the Falklands today, with modern equipment and doctrine (not to mention the enhanced air-mobility our army didn't have back then), would we need the same kind of naval task force?

I have no idea what Gordon Brown's approach might be, but Blair's willingness to use force is abundantly clear and frankly I'd be totally unsurprised if he were to respond to such a situation with a delaration of war followed by tactical strikes on mainland military bases. Bomb them out of the Malvinas without ever needing to land there by making it simply not worth their while.