Analysis: We are bluffing – but so are the Argentines

After all, he was part of the Task Force in May 1982 when a handful of SAS men destroyed 11 Argentine parked aircraft. The garrison of 114 men on Pebble Island were easily bypassed in the dark and troops from 22 SAS’s D Squadron were soon blasting away with explosive charges and small arms.

So surely 30 years on, the Islands’ four RAF Typhoons should not present much of a problem for like-minded Argentine specialists dropped close offshore in small rubber boats? Admittedly the current British garrison is a tad bigger than Pebble Islands – standing presently unreinforced at 1,300 soldiers. But it should still be relatively easy for skillful saboteurs to disable the aircraft, thus in a matter of minutes rendering the RAF’s entire South Atlantic air cover void.

But it would not be quite so simple as that. The British radars covering the environs of the main airfield near Stanley are state-of-the-art, while its ground forces have skilful patrols watching the site and its approaches. And the multi-million-pound Typhoons are housed in special hangars which are closely guarded whether the aircraft are in the air or not.

Doubtless the Argentine military might be able to come up with a credible covert attack plan – and without British carriers to project air power, if they were to be successful in taking the Typhoons out of the equation, that would indeed spell the end for the Islander’s freedom (together with the huge oil reserves recently found to the north).

The burning question is whether the Argentines have the stomach for another fight. The British calculation is that they might not and are probably bluffing. This – coupled with the fact that the Argentine navy has never fully recovered from the pasting it took from British submarines all those years ago – is presumably what keeps the lights from burning late at night in Whitehall (or at least for the moment).

It is rumoured a British submarine is once more on patrol in the South Atlantic and we have a much more powerful surface ship on station as a clear deterrent. To an extent, however, without carriers the UK is bluffing. But so it seems are the Argentines.

• Clive Fairweather was deputy commander of the SAS during the Falklands conflict