The aerial forces of the Argentinean Air Force and Navy found themselves in a complex, unenviable position during the 1982 conflict with Great Britain for possession of the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas. Despite Argentinean numerical superiority, the modern weaponry and tactical proficiency of the United Kingdom’s armed forces were a formidable threat. The Argentineans found themselves in a disadvantaged tactical situation due to a lack of preparation to include planning, intelligence, training, and resources necessary to counter a sophisticated military threat. To lessen their disadvantage, the Argentineans reorganized their Air Force; leveraged the tactical skill, innovation, and determination of their pilots; and employed their newly acquired air-launched Exocet anti-ship missile. This paper examines the context of the Argentinean political situation, explores the condition and reaction of the Air Force and Naval Air Arm to imminent conflict, details the aerial combat employment outcomes, and concludes with an evaluation of the results. Worldwide headlines declared either invasion or liberation on 2 April 1982. These words explained how both London and Buenos Aires felt after the Argentineans seized the Falkland Islands from the United Kingdom. Because of this action, the aerial forces of the Argentinean Air Force and Navy found themselves in a complex, unenviable position during the conflict with Great Britain for possession of the Falkland Islands. The Argentineans were in a disadvantaged tactical situation due to a lack of preparation to include planning, intelligence, training, and resources necessary to counter a sophisticated military threat. To lessen their disadvantage, the Argentineans reorganized their Air Force; leveraged the tactical skill, innovation, and determination of their pilots; and employed their newly acquired air-launched Exocet anti-ship missile.

The aerial forces of the Argentinean Air Force and Navy found themselves in a complex, unenviable position during the 1982 conflict with Great Britain for possession of the Falkland Islands / Islas Malvinas. Despite Argentinean numerical superiority, the modern weaponry and tactical proficiency of the United Kingdom's armed forces were a formidable threat. The Argentineans found themselves in a disadvantaged tactical situation due to a lack of preparation to include planning, intelligence, training, and resources necessary to counter a sophisticated military threat. To lessen their disadvantage, the Argentineans reorganized their Air Force; leveraged the tactical skill, innovation, and determination of their pilots; and employed their newly acquired air-launched Exocet anti-ship missile. This paper examines the context of the Argentinean political situation, explores the condition and reaction of the Air Force and Naval Air Arm to imminent conflict, details the aerial combat employment outcomes, and concludes with an evaluation of the results.

A Royal Air Force veteran of the Falklands Conflict presents a comprehensive, myth-busting study of the air campaign. In the spring of 1982, Argentina and the UK engaged in tense combat over control of the Falkland Islands. The ten weeks of fighting are often portrayed with a decidedly one-sided narrative: either heroic Argentine pilots relentlessly pressing home their attacks, or the Sea Harrier force utterly dominating its Argentine enemies. In Air Power in the Falklands Conflict, RAF veteran John Shields presents a detailed and even-handed analysis of the Falkland Islands air war. As an RAF officer, John Shields spent two and a half years in the Falklands as an air defense navigator. Using recently released primary source material, Shields looks at the air campaign at the operational level. He develops a considered view of what should have occurred, and contrasts it with what actually happened. In so doing, John Shields has produced a comprehensive account of the air campaign that has demolished many of the enduring myths of this Cold War conflict.

While many books have been written on the Falklands War, this is the first to focus on the vital aspect of logistics. The challenges were huge; the lack of preparation time; the urgency; the huge distances involved; the need to requisition ships from trade to name but four.??After a brief discussion of events leading to Argentina's invasion the book describes in detail the rush to re-organise and deploy forces, despatch a large task force, the innovative solutions needed to sustain the Task Force, the vital staging base at Ascension Island, the in-theatre resupply, the set-backs and finally the restoring of order after victory.??Had the logistics plan failed, victory would have been impossible and humiliation inevitable, with no food for the troops, no ammunition for the guns, no medical support for casualties etc.??The lessons learnt have never been more important with increasing numbers of out-of-area operations required in remote trouble spots at short notice. The Falklands experience is crucial for the education of new generations of military planners and fascinating for military buffs and this book fills an important gap.

Thirty years after the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, the war remains a source of continued debate and analysis for politicians, historians and military strategists. Not only did the conflict provide a fascinating example of modern expeditionary warfare, but it also brought to the fore numerous questions regarding international law, sovereignty, the inheritance of colonialism, the influence of history on national policy and the use of military force for domestic political uses. As the essays in this collection show, the numerous facets of the Falklands War remain current today and have ramifications far beyond the South Atlantic. Covering issues ranging from military strategy to Anglo-American relations, international reactions and international law to media coverage, the volume provides an important overview of some of the complex issues involved, and offers a better understanding of this conflict and of the tensions which still exist today between London and Buenos Aires. Of interest to scholars of history, politics, international relations and defence studies, the volume provides a timely and forthright examination of a short but bloody episode of a kind that is likely to be seen with increasing frequency, as nations lay competing claims to disputed territories around the globe.