Britain's Defences

I like the Container Ship idea but as a pre-emptive surprise attack by single ships (say 5 as a random number, depend on how many ships from PRC dock daily in the UK) each filled with one to two thousand SF/infantry and a bit of self propelled (SP) SAM, SP-Artillery and lots of SP-Anti-Tank (maybe even a few attack helicopters - depends on the hassle of storage at sea) and each attacking a seperate port simultaneously.

The SF types take the ports over while the infantry get SP-SAM get unloaded 1st to setup air cover (thats our quickest reaction response - the Army would be at least 12-24hrs away) and then the Arty/AT and supply stuff. The infantry stay in the local area while the SF types head off to hit specfic targets like airfields, base's and infrastructure (our military bases aren't designed or manned to stop large numbers of people attacking them).

Once they have secured multiple defended beach-heads the miltary ships (on "exercise" with the Indian Navy for eg in the Indian sea) can be here in less than 5 days and their subs can be even closer for Cruise missile strikes.

Of course all of this is rubbish, all they'd have to do is ask for all the money back we've borrowed from them as a country!
 
ianh said:
all they'd have to do is ask for all the money back we've borrowed from them as a country!
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I was in shanghai a few weeks back and during discussion about the Yuan exchange rate and the US making noises about it our subcontractors commented over dinner, "if they dont like it can we have them all back?" to much laughter from the chinese at the table. The american there looked very sheepish.

The olny reason china is lending money to everyone is if they didnt their economy would fold because they are the worlds biggest manufacturing center and without customers they have no economy,
 
EdGey said:
Plus a large number of Royal Marines, a small British Army garrison, four RAF Typhoons, a Royal Navy Frigate or Destroyer at any one time, and the ability to easily increase that force should anything look suspicious. (One can assume they keep a close eye on them).
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The ground troops are an irrelevance they don't have the numbers or the weaponary to prevent a determined invasion. The South Atlantic Guard ship can be anywhere in the South Atlantic it's not permanently on station off the Falklands and is only a single ship which like all surface vessels is vulnerable to sub attack. The Eurofighters are the big and interesting difference to the last time the Argies invaded the key being how long their fuel and missile reserves would last in the face of a sustained attack and if they would remain how long they could remain in constant service without some form of maintenance. My money says against the current Argie air force they cold hold out long enough for aerial re-inforcments to arrive as additional fighters can be flown down with tanker support. One other factor that could swing events against us would be a terrorist or commando attack on the runway as it wouldn't take much to make the runway unuseable long enough for a significant Argentine air raid to put it out of action long term.

As you can see the debate can easily be argued either way, thats why it is a favourite among arm chair generals and bored military personel all over the uk.

Back on topic Britains current defences are more that sufficient to defend us from any agression directed at our home islands that we would expect to repel unaided. Much as during the cold war we never planned to defeat the USSR alone we would not envisage any significant war on our shores without the involvment of our allies. Were Britain to be seriously threatened our NATO allies are treaty bound to assist us.
 
EdGey said:
Plus a large number of Royal Marines, a small British Army garrison, four RAF Typhoons, a Royal Navy Frigate or Destroyer at any one time, and the ability to easily increase that force should anything look suspicious. (One can assume they keep a close eye on them).
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There's rarely any marines, always a small amount of Infantry and Engineers. Most of the armed forces are RAF who are quite a way from being combat troops, they are there to maintain the airbase and its aircraft which are the route for reinforcement.

Given adequate warning of an attack you can easily defend the falklands, bring extra troops by air, block the seas with submarines. A daring suprise assult on to the airport might work, for example you could sneak by some ruse or other a large airliner on to the runway. Of course prior int of such a plan would result in a shot down airliner but would we fire the missile in case we were wrong and just killed 500 holiday makers.
 
ianh said:
I like the Container Ship idea but as a pre-emptive surprise attack by single ships (say 5 as a random number, depend on how many ships from PRC dock daily in the UK) each filled with one to two thousand SF/infantry and a bit of self propelled
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Troops are shifted around by air, troops carriers simply aren't used anymore too high risk (I know you don't mean troop carriers but it still wouldn't happen, ships get checked for smuggling/weapons I doubt this would be very easy).
 
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I'm not sure I can beleive we would be stupid enough to leave the falklands so vulnerable to attack. Its obvious they want them back, its obvious they are willing to try and take them back if possible.

I must say I am surprised at the lack of ground forces currently there. It looks as if the origional info I posted was out of date.

Can I ask your source? I'd like to read into it more myself.
 
It's also worth remembering that the Argentine threat isn't what it once was, their military personnel and equipment levels having being slashed since the fall of the junta and more cuts to come in the current economic environment.

Anyway back to the Chinese invasion.
 
EdGey said:
Plus a large number of Royal Marines, a small British Army garrison, four RAF Typhoons, a Royal Navy Frigate or Destroyer at any one time, and the ability to easily increase that force should anything look suspicious. (One can assume they keep a close eye on them).
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There's no Marines on the Falklands, not on permanent operational duty anyway.

Those four Typhoons would alone be more than a match for the Argentine Airforce however.
 
Von Smallhausen said:
Would the US intervene militarily if China took back Taiwan ?

I have my doubts.
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Maybe, depends what part of the military gets it way, the US navy would love an opportunity to justify their budget, some thing they haven't been able to do with Afghanistan or Iraq.
 
This might sound bad but I really want to see a big war happen because two superpowers! I would love to see what kind of secret tech each nation has, like China definitely has super robots of some sort :cool:

Obviously without the nuclear fallout etc

Would definitely be cool to see how long it took the USA to flatten an entire nation to the ground in my opinion.
 
It might be interesting to see WW3 play out but you don't really want to see it, the two tiny nukes dropped on Japan did horrific damage, imagine your family getting much bigger ones dropped on them, definitely not cool.
 
Von Smallhausen said:
That already happens.

The UK gets electronically attacked about a thousand times a day by the Chinese.

My source for that was a very good one.
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Wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more than that really, thats going on info when being taught some stuff by one of the NSA's lead trainers, amongst other things.

I know we get a knock on the door from them pretty regularly ;)

Multitude of companies around the country will be targeted for various reasons a lot of the time.

I'd expect BAE and RR amongst others to be targeted, as well as anyone who is on any kind of government network no matter how small.
 
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