Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
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The
Falklands,
30 Years
Later
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naval forces
It
is now 30
years since the
Argentineans
seized the
Falklands,
one of the last
British colonies,
and the
British seized
them back.
The war between the two included the
hottest naval action of the Cold War. It
was also, perhaps surprisingly, rather
instructive about how things might have
turned out had the Cold War turned
hot. For the United States, there were
lessons on three distinct levels.
One level was that of grand alliance
strategy. Before the war broke out,
A mericans tended to assume that
they led an alliance of completely
like-minded governments against the
Soviets; all other governments were
neutral, leaning one way or another.
One implication was that any war
that might arise out of the Cold War
would pit Western weapons against
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dod photo
A British Royal Navy Sea Harrier FRS1. The Sea Harrier, the Royal Navys attempt to give a subsonic attack aircraft air-to-air capability, was a great success
in the Falklands War. With supremely professional pilots employing superior tactics, their Blue Fox radars and the AIM-9L Sidewinder, the SHARs shot
down more than 20 aircraft and lost none in air-to-air engagements. Its success was probably a factor in the Royal Navys decision to procure the F-35B.
on the Central Front in NATO, was altogether wrong. Britain could not escape
global responsibilities. That was not
simply the legacy of empire; a few years
after the Falklands, the Royal Navy
found itself mounting an armed tanker
protection patrol in the Gulf. That patrol
was mounted not because some British
colony or dependency was in trouble, but
because as part of the Western alliance
Britain had a vital national interest
in maintaining the oil shipping route
through the Gulf (somewhat later the
U.S. Navy was also deployed there).
On the eve of the Falklands War, the
British went through the latest of an
apparently endless series of defense
rev iews intended to keep defense
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naval forces
A low-flying airplane
can be destroyed
by the blast of its
own bomb. The
Argentineans
therefore fuzed their
bombs with relatively
long delays. In
several cases, bombs
passed all the
way through ships
before exploding.
In others, fuzes
failed, and bombs
lodged in ships.
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Photo by Griffiths911
naval forces
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HMS Invincible returns to massive celebrations following the Falklands Conflict in 1982. Lined up on deck are Sea King helicopters from 820 Naval Air
Squadron and Sea Harrier FRS1 aircraft from 800 Naval Air Squadron.
naval forces
Faced with
diesel-electric
submarines,
the British
relied entirely
on active sonar,
because a
diesel-electric
submarine
on batteries
has little or
no distinctive
acoustic
signature. One
consequence
was that they
could not
distinguish
whales from
submarines.
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