Officers Tie British Cuts and Risk to Falklands

A future Falklands war.

"LONDON -- A group of retired British admirals has publicly attacked the decision of Prime Minister David Cameron's government to scrap Britain's only aircraft carrier and its entire fleet of Harrier jump jets, saying it exposes the Falkland Islands to renewed attack by Argentina.
Retired Royal Navy commanders criticized the decision to scrap the Ark Royal, Britain's only aircraft carrier, in defense cuts.
The admirals used a platform traditionally favored by influential figures in Britain seeking to influence public policy: a letter to the newspaper The Times of London, published Wednesday.
They described the scrapping of the Ark Royal, the Royal Navy's flagship, and the fleet of 80 carrier-borne Harrier jets as "strategically and financially perverse," and warned of a repeat of Argentina's seizure of the Falklands.
"In respect of the newly valuable Falkland Islands and their oil fields, because of these and other cuts, for the next 10 years at least, Argentina is practically invited to inflict on us a national humiliation on the scale of the loss of Singapore -- one from which British prestige, let alone the administration in power at the time, might never recover," the letter said.
The reference to Singapore summoned memories of one of Britain's greatest 20th-century military disasters, the Japanese conquest of Singapore in February 1942, which historians have called one of the worst defeats ever suffered by Britain's forces.
The Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982, and the military operation that restored British control, was a major shock for the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Over the succeeding years, Britain has reinforced its small military garrison on the islands, which are 8,000 miles from Britain, and repeatedly reaffirmed its intention to maintain control there in the face of continued Argentine claims to sovereignty.
The discovery of significant reserves of oil in the chilly waters surrounding the islands has added a new edge to the dispute.
Naval power, including the use of carrier-borne Harriers, was central to the recovery of the Falklands and added a new chapter to Britain's historic reliance on the Royal Navy to project military power.
But last month when the Cameron government announced deep cuts in the $60 billion annual military budget as part of a wider austerity program aimed at cutting its growing debt burden, one of the principal casualties was the navy's carrier force.
In a choice between competing claims by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, the government chose to immediately mothball the Ark Royal -- which, after 25 years in service, is the only British carrier capable of launching fixed-wing jets -- and to scrap all of the Harriers operated by the navy and the air force.
The decision amounted to a reprieve for most but not all of the air force's Tornado jets, which were chosen over the Harriers because, the Defense Ministry said, the Harriers alone could not have maintained the air support for Britain's 10,000-strong military contingent in Afghanistan.
The new defense configuration also involved another highly contentious move: the go-ahead for a $9 billion program to complete two new aircraft carriers already under construction in British shipyards, and to equip one of them with a new generation of aircraft, a naval version of the Joint Strike Fighter.
The decision attracted widespread criticism, in part because the government said it was cheaper to finish building the carriers than to scrap them. It has said it intends to sell one of the two carriers within three years of its entering service, and does not expect the second to be operational, with aircraft, before 2020.
That left Britain with the prospect of a 10-year gap without any carrier-borne strike aircraft, a prospect that the admirals seized upon in their letter to The Times.
"The last treasury-driven '10-year rule' in the 1930s nearly cost us our freedom, faced with Hitler," they said, referring to a military strategy that assumed Britain would have a decade to prepare for war with Germany, with resulting weaknesses that Hitler exploited.
The officers who signed the letter included two former heads of the Royal Navy, Lord Alan West and Sir Julian Oswald, as well as Vice Adm. Sir Jeremy Blackham and Vice Adm. John McAnally. They were joined by a former army commander, Maj. Gen. Julian Thompson.
Defense Minister Liam Fox rejected the assertion that the cuts exposed the Falkland Islands to attack, telling The Times in a statement that Britain maintained four Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes on the islands, as well as a small unit of Royal Marines.
"It is simply not the case that decommissioning the Harrier would impact on our ability to defend territories in the South Atlantic," he said. "We maintain a wide range of assets, not least a well-defended airfield to ensure the defense of the Falkland Islands. We have a far greater presence than previously, able to respond to any and all threats." "

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/world/europe/11britain.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=falklands&st=cse

What do you think about this? I don't think scrapping the Ark Royal and retiring the sea harriers will in any invoke the Argentinians to a second Falklands war, also it does not mention the decline of the Argentinian armed forces. However the loss of the Royal Navies carries does present a massive loss in British capabilities not to mention that the four Eurofighters and the royal marines were never intended to win a possible war by themselves instead defend the Falklands until further reinforcements arrive reinforcements that may not make a difference due to the lack of any air power that might bring. Also something interesting to think about is American Involvement, with British troops currently serving next to their American allies in Afghanistan and in various low intensity conflicts it is not unthinkable if the Americans and perhaps her allies would join Britain in any future conflict with Argentina over the Falklands.