By 1982 the Royal Navy was on the chopping block. It is fair to say that neither the British nor Argentines were fully prepared for the war that they would find themselves involved. Obtaining air parity is not enough to limit strikes against logistic vessels, amphibious assault ships, and most importantly your aircraft carriers. One key lesson to draw from the Falklands Campaign is the importance of understanding how effective land-based strike aircraft can be used against an expeditionary naval task force that does not possess the inherent right to air supremacy. Vital lessons we can draw from the war over the South Atlantic archipelago will assist company and field grade officers across all the joint force in developing an understanding of how difficult conducting such a campaign could be in the near future. The Falklands-or, as the islands are known in Buenos Aires, the “Malvinas”-provides future war fighters with a snippet of what expeditionary sea-based combat may entail. New technologies such as precision guided weapons, cyber warfare and space operations set up a complex multidimensional space that impacts the political climate and deterrence responses across the globe. The modern contest the United States is met with includes thousands of miles across four oceans, dozens of countries, and diverse geographic areas that places the combat area beyond a single conflict zone. Today in the Western Pacific, the challenges that the United States and its allies face from the People’s Republic of China are far beyond the scope of the showdown in the South Atlantic between the British and Argentines. The 1982 Falklands War is the most recent case study of what a modern naval campaign may look like.
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