Not only that but has entirely missed the point of the report. Even if Argentina somehow managed to find easy credit to buy a hundred jets or a fleet that would make that "IF" a reality, that still wouldn't make her a powerful country

Brilliant. I do hope we paid several million £ for that fairytale. :rolleyes:

Tornado / typhoon.....does it really matter? The fact is, there are THREE of them.:yuk:

The worrying thing in all of this is that some people out there (some of you lot reading it) genuinely end up believing the report and go away with that warm fuzzy feeling of how powerful (militarily) the UK is.

Smell the coffee guys - it is a blip on the military power scale. We are a coastal defence force at best. With the odd jet buggering off to the middle east to make us look important politically.

[And please - before you start - my posts have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of our mil. That is and always has been sacrosanct.]

THOMAS COUPLING

And still you are wrong! If each and every one of your hard facts is wrong, how on earth can we take your emotive and cliched opinions as anything but meaningless drivel?

Yes!

Wrong again!

If you can't even be bothered to get minor details like these correct, as, pr00ne wrote, why should anyone take any notice of the rest of the bilge you spout!

-RP

I think it's our cooking that makes us great.

Who could deny the global power of a nation that gave the world mushy peas ?

Or Cornish Pasties?

Who's joking? But to answer your question, it involves primarily three things:

1. A military designed to be expeditionary rather than be a garrison force. In other words a military that is designed to operate from places other than their home base. This sounds simple, but is actually exceedingly difficult to achieve. Very few nations have ever developed military forces that can deploy globally. The USA and UK are the only two I can think of.

2. Overseas bases to deploy your forces to, and from which you can sustain long term operations. Basically, only the USA and UK have such bases globally and not just regionally. The USA is unique in that it has mobile bases in the form of carrier battle groups.

3. A support infrastructure able to support military forces that are globally deployed.

As for item 1 above, the UK developed that ability in the mid to late 19th century and while it has since atrophied, enough has been preserved to maintain a global presence. The US began developing that ability between the world wars and fully developed it after WW2. No other nation that I know of has even attempted it, although Japan got somewhat of a start just before WW2 but completely lost it after the war. You should read Alfred Thayer Mahan. He was mandatory reading where I went to school. And if you want to go back to antiquities, Rome sort of achieved it in the Western world. Rome's greatest weapon was (arguably) its road systems that enabled it to move large armies rapidly and sustain them in the field. And while it never got the prestige of the Roman Legions, Rome's Navy was instrumental in the Roman Empire's expansion and intrumental in sustaining it.

Rhino and Pr o on.

Pray tell me the real answer then?

In the meantime, I'll disclose my source, who is a military pilot based down there FULL TIME. He tells me that on PERMANENT alert:

Four Typhoons (PS: One is permanently undergoing maintenance at any one time).
500 fighting troops and around the same again as admin/engineering/HQ and logistics.

They have one decent warship down there and two SAR helos.

Oooops look at this:

Britain's military defences in the Falkland Islands - Telegraph

Where exactly have I been misleading anyone, then?

(PS: occasionally the odd deployment gets sent down there for a couple of weeks at a time, but they don't stay down there).

So, your 'source' is a 'military pilot based down there FULL TIME'? To the best of my knowledge there are no military (RAF at least) pilots based at MPA 'full time', they rotate aircrews on a regular basis...

I suspect your 'source' is more likely to be HP or Heinz, in which case you've spelt it wrong, it's, 'sauce'!

-RP

God I find moaning about how awful it is that we only have X in the South Atlantic tedious. How many nations sustain forces 8000 miles from home exactly? Try us, the French and the USA and thats it.

More to the point, given the Argentine Navy has no ammunition (its missiles are all life expired), has an average of 19 hours submerged per year for its submarine force and gets collectively less days at sea per year than a single RN hull, perhaps we could take the eeyore blinders off a bit here?

Aahh lads, ease up on TC a bit eh ? He probably reads the Beano instead of the Dandy. The latest posts seem to be erring more toward Argentinian inability to act rather than his charge of our limited capability to defend. I would put my money on whatever few are there being more than capable of rebuffing any Argentinian adventurists. Let's hope it never gets to that point shall we. Awaiting my re education from seniors and betters, never fear, I spent 30 years listening to it.

Smudge :ok: