Posted on 10/28/2014 1:25:30 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Buenos Aires has bigger air power problems
Argentina has expressed interest in buying 24 Gripen E fighters from Brazil, which has just inked a licensing deal with Sweden permitting the South American country to manufacture its own copies of Saab’s new single-engine fighter.
“Our willingness to cooperate with Argentina, our neighbor and ally, is total,” Brazilian defense minister Celso Amorim said.
If you’re British and you’re worried—don’t be. A few Gripens will barely begin to restore the badly-depleted Argentine air arm, which lost up to a third of its 409 warplanes during two months of brutal fighting with U.K. forces over the Falkland Islands in 1982.
In the 32 years since losing the South Atlantic war, the Fuerza Aerea Argentina and the air wings of the Argentine army and navy have managed to acquire just a few dozens planes—many of them secondhand A-4 attack jets from America—and upgrade a few existing aircraft to make good their 1982 losses.
And owing to funding shortfalls and mismanagement, more and more of Argentina’s roughly 270 current aircraft have fallen into military irrelevance or even total disrepair.
“The entire air force fleet lacks modern avionics and systems, and still uses analog equipment,” Santiago Rivas wrote in Combat Aircraft magazine. “Aircraft have missed out on self-protection equipment, including radar warning receivers, chaff/flare dispensers and so forth.”
The Argentine air force’s missiles and bombs are antiquated.
“Critically, only the A-4s have an aerial refueling capability and there are just two tankers. [Airborne early warning] capability is nonexistent,” Rivas added, “despite the fact that controlling the airspace of such a large country is a major and vital task.”
Even if Argentina does end up buying the Gripens—and there are lots of reasons it probably won’t—it will still be hundreds of new planes short of a modern air force, one capable of matching the U.K. or another major rival in battle.
The Royal Air Force, for one, might be smaller than it was in 1982, but it still possesses hundreds of modern aircraft, including Typhoon fighters, upgraded Tornado bombers, Sentry early-warning planes, new Voyager tankers and a host of spy planes including drones.
Engine veto
The Gripen E, a major upgrade of Sweden’s Gripen C, is powered by an American-made General Electric F414 engine. U.S. export law gives Washington veto power over any sale of the motor, even as part of a foreign warplane.
So if the U.S.—the U.K.’s closest ally—so chooses, it could more or less cancel Brazil’s proposed Gripen sale to Argentina. Indeed, London has repeatedly leaned on its allies not to sell jet fighters to Buenos Aires.
In the past couple of years, Great Britain has diplomatically defeated Argentina’s attempt to buy used Mirage F.1 fighters from Spain as well as the Latin American country’s proposal to hire a French company to upgrade Argentine Super Etendard attack planes.
Argentina has been in talks to acquire mothballed Kfir fighters from Israel, but like the Gripens these jets have American engines, thus giving the U.K. a wedge to block any transfer.
Now, just because America could halt a Gripen sale at Britain’s request doesn’t mean it definitely will. The U.S. and Argentina are not unfriendly to each other. As recently as the late 1990s, Washington approved the transfer of three dozen secondhand A-4 attack planes to the Fuerza Aerea Argentina.
After all, two dozen fighters do not an air force make. The fighters need tankers to refuel them, radar early warning planes to help them spot targets, transport planes to support their deployments and training aircraft to get their pilots up to snuff.
They need good, modern weapons.
Air forces are complex organizations that, even more than they need particular aircraft, require professional management. Especially when money is short and procurement options are limited.
In the Argentine air force, “there has been no consistent planning,” Rivas wrote. And until that changes, new Gripens won’t even begin to save the Fuerza Aerea Argentina.
Is it true they have the only operational squadron of Sopwith Camels left in the world?
Another consequence of a communist victory in the voting in Brasil.
That is entirely possible, I mean we haven't seen Snoopy flying around here lately. Maybe he went down to Argentina to keep up his flying skills.
I don’t like the name, reminds me too much of my wife and kids.
The “Cold War orphans” have all fallen into poverty since the military relinquished control; with few exceptions Latin America is a leftist bloc now.
Uh oh, we are supposed to be selling a lot of military equipment to Brazil soon, including potentially Type 26 Frigates. Maybe we’ll have to face them one day like we did Type 42 destroyers during the 1982 conflict.
Had the Argie military had their heart in it (which they didn't) and had they committed more forces, the Brits would have taken heavier losses. Of course, had the Brits decided to widen the war to Argentina itself, the Argies would have been in a real hurt locker.
Back then, we would have suffered for sending harriers over the argie mainland,where they could have used their fighters to full effect without having to worry about fuel and staying low to deploy ordinance and avoid radar. Nowadays of course, we have tomohawks and euro fighters with better refueling capabilities, as well as a real base at RAF Mount Pleasant, and the argue military capability has stagnated and degraded ever since. They would certainly be in for a world of hurt today.
Had they moved their Mirages (and reserve F-86s) to the Falklands, they could have provided real air defense against the Harriers, but they weren't that committed. I think the Argies were more worried about an attack of opportunity coming from Chile.
You are correct, that today the Argentines would be in a much, much worse position (unless they destroyed the forward deployed RAF aircraft with a special forces attack). Even then, they would be in a worse position for keeping ahold of the Falklands after they were taken.
The British military is a pale shadow of its Cold War counterpart, both in terms of numbers and equipment. The rickety 2-carrier British armada that had to be cobbled together to win the Falklands War no longer exists, thanks to defense cuts under both Labour and Tory governments. Argentina's real problem isn't its military which probably hasn't gotten weaker, relatively-speaking, compared to British forces. It's the economy, which has gone down the Venezuelan garden path, without the Venezuelan bounty of large amounts of easily-extracted oil deposits.
The UK has maintained its submarine forces and they have TLAM (Tomahawk Land Attack Missile). The Argentine Navy has minimal ASW capability. A single sub could take out the airfields and do some major port damage as well. If there are one or two TLAMs left over, there goes the power grid as well.
After the airfields are closed, then the Harriers can do as they wish.
TLAMs can take an airfield out for a few hours, maybe even a few days, but that would be the extent of it.
A few TLAMS per airfield won’t shut them down for long. The issue is that the RAF now has constant presence on the Falklands with aircraft which are far superior to the Argies, who still don’t have the capability to spend more than a few minutes over the Falklands, due to range/fuel.
If, the British military has grown smaller, then the Argentine military is in pathetic shape. They have had virtually no new inductions in the past 3 decades compared to the British-in the meantime, the UK has inducted newer subs and force multipliers.
The UK’s deterrent fleet of Typhoon fighters on the island can tear apart any Argentine aerial formation till the cows come home. A single Astute class submarine carries enough Tomahawks to level most assets in Buenos Aires while having enough torpedoes to sink most of its rickety fleet.
Modern Argie aircraft would complicate the picture for the RAF.
If the RAF base were taken out, the Gripens would pose a major problem for Harriers. F-35s would fair better.
A sneak attack similar to the initial landing of Argentine troops during the Falklands campaign would neutralize the Typhoons and the lone destroyer. Argentina's modern German subs and P-3 Orions could be tasked to hunt the British sub prowling the island's waters. While the Falklands are 400 miles away from Argentina, they are thousands of miles from the UK. Reinforcement and resupply are expensive and complicated. The last engagement stretched the limits of Thatcher's political capital. The next one may end up with the islands renamed the Malvinas.
As to escalation, if Britain levels Buenos Aires, it will face a trade embargo from Latin America. And much of South America would jump in on Argentina's side, including Brazil. Would the EU even stand behind the UK during the ensuing economic hostilities?
My view is that the Brits need to station more assets on the Falklands. Because if the Argentines grab it, they won't have the political capital necessary to marshal the immense resources necessary to take it back.
Respectfully, The British retired their Harriers, and sold them to the U.S. Marines, in 2011. Your point remains valid, but it would be another U.K. aircraft that would fill the role. Thank you.
Regarding the Harriers, kindly see my post #18. Thank you.
You are so correct. I thought only the RN Harriers had been retired, and the RAF still had theirs.
Thanks for the info.
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