IIRC there was a lot of concern about Argie subs in the area and the ASW was out in force, including a few Oberons (one of which rammed a rock and broke a torp tube during a SpecFor landing).
Today, as I was saying during one of our Teamspeak gatherings in the Lolwaffles the other night, our fighter force would certainly do well against the Argies however I do worry about our carrier CAPs.
Eurofighters and Tornados are all well and good but we'd have to tanker them there. Our current carrier based Harriers are the GR9s, which are primarily ground attack aircraft, enough perhaps to put up a fight against the Argies, but I'd be a lot happier if they had upgraded the Sea Harriers to cover the gap between their use-by date and the incoming F-35s.
Although, to be fair, our new Type-45s would blat a good number of incoming Argie ASMs, so hopefully no Sheffield repeats, then once the way was clear onto the island, we'd get our lads ashore and then, Argie or no Argie, the Falklands would be ours again in no short order.
Of course, the question also is, would the British public want to go to war over the islands? There was a reasonable sized amount of the population in the last war who didn't even know where they were, some people, I'm told, thought they were off Scotland
And with our current government, I strongly suspect that we'd vacate the islands and then apologise to the Argentinians for being on them in the first place.
But, if it came down to it, I reckon we'd pull through, perhaps a little more bloodied than before, our forces have been dramatically downsized since the end of the Cold War, but, as Neal said, Never bet against England, we often do our best when the odds are against us
