We may have air superiority for a day after which I strongly suspect we would be out of missiles at which point the argentine navy and airforce have free range to bring in the troops. The only hope would be that we already had an attack sub stationed in the area to discourage them but this is often not the case as we only have a limited fleet.
The war itself would take on a very different complexion as once they had taken the island they would have access to a decent run way that is long enough to operate there jets giving them imediate air superiority over the islands and we no longer have the long range bombing capability to destroy it so again we would be relying on an attack sub with cruise missiles.
The major challenge we would face would be re-taking the island, last time we pinched a significant number of merchant ships to transport our troops and supplies, we could only do this as they operated under UK flags. The UK merchant fleet is now tiny and comendering any ship flying under the flag of a different nation is deemed piracy.
We also only have two active carriers one of wich is in refit the other is in the gulf, the delay in getting a task force together and ready for sea would be huge alowing the argentines to massively reinforce the islands.
The only way we could dislodge them should they wish to take the islands would be with even more US help than last time.
Did anyone watch the documentary on the bombing of their airstrip? The lengths that the UK went to to fly a bomber there to drop a massive bomb on Argentina? It really was incredibly to watch!
Just looking up there:
It took 11 Victor Tankers to refuel the Vulcan we sent. Not only that, but they had to refuel the refuellers (although it doesnt mention that anywhere!) and I believe the Vulcan never made it home!
If you read the book about the Vulcans attacking the runway you would know that after all the logistics only one bomb actually hit the target (they actually sent two but the primary one ran into problems and had o run back). After that the Vulcan made it's way home again (after rendezvousing with another tanker and an MR2 (?) (radar plane)). The Airforce did this about half a dozen more times during the war and i'm pretty sure none of them ended in Rio.
Anyway fater all that effort there was very little damage, today all we would need to do is station an attack sub off the islands and launch about a dozen cruise missiles, pretty much wiping out any chance of using the runway (i'm sure the runway wasn't actually damaged enough to stop planes flying in and out last time).
Nukeing a major nation over some tiny islands is not going to happen the world community would be appaled and the repercussions for the UK massive. I do however believe that we would sit a couple of attack subs off the coast and hurl crusie missiles at strategic targets within Argentina in an effort to persuade them to 'Get off our Land' which we were not prepared to do last time using long range bombers.
That we would probably do as well if we couldn't take the islands without too many casualties.
As for US involvement, they didn't help us manpowerwise but they "lent" us the runway on Ascension island (it is actually leased to them from us) and parked tankers full of aviation fuel off it that we could take as much as we wanted from.
They also gave the special forces (in a SF to SF deal, although apparently it was authorised from the highest power...) stingers (we were the first shoot down a plane in real combat with one), GPS devices and sat communication devices, which apparently got the backs up of the navy as they had to use a very over saturated system whereas the SAS could have real time comms with their base back home.
As for today, they are not going to do anything, if they did our men and planes on the island would give them a massive bloody nose (and lets face it that is really all they are there for) before surrendering, like last time. We'd then try and commendeer as many ships as possible to get more troops down there, which could be a bit of a mission now... The Argentines were a bit unlucky last time, 1 they thought we weren't really bothered about the islands (we withdrew our icebreaker and sole naval ship) so invaded thinking we would just capitulate, they know not this time and 2 they hit us at just the right time, just in time for us to de mothball a load of our navy, a few months later and we may not have had the navy to do what we did.
As for Oil, hopefully they will be finding even more, I want to get down there and dig it out.
