Argentina is not a credible power able to threaten Falklands

Argentina has spent the past two years rebuilding an air force it allowed to wither for a decade, and every time a new aircraft arrives the question surfaces again of whether the Falkland Islands are threatened by it.

The rebuild is real, the capability gap it addresses was actually genuine, but it does not amount to a force capable of operating against the islands.

At the centre of the programme sits the F-16, with Argentina having agreed in 2024 to buy 24 second-hand F-16AM/BM aircraft from Denmark for around $300 million, a deal the government of Javier Milei described as the country’s most important military acquisition in fifty years. The first six arrived at Río Cuarto in Córdoba on 5 December 2025, with the remainder due in batches of six each December through to 2028, and the fleet working up at the VI Air Brigade at Tandil.

Argentina, as readers will know, retired its last supersonic fighters in 2015 and spent nearly a decade without any aircraft capable of intercepting an intruder, which for a country of that size and coastline is an extraordinary gap, and the F-16 closes it while bringing Argentine aircrew into Western avionics, weapons and logistics standards for the first time in a generation.

Alongside the aircraft, Argentina has taken delivery of the first of a batch of American M1126 Stryker armoured vehicles for an army still operating TAM medium tanks and M113 carriers, and has signed with the Danish firm Terma for F-16 electronic warfare upgrades covering software, mission planning and ground support. The 2026 budget carries capital lines for hangars, ground support equipment and base protection systems at Tandil and Río Cuarto running through to 2028.

The navy has seen considerably less of this investment, with a surface fleet resting on German-designed MEKO 360 destroyers and MEKO 140 corvettes, most of which require extensive maintenance or mid-life work, while the service has been evaluating the retirement of its last S-2T Turbo Tracker anti-submarine aircraft and has operated without a functioning submarine force since the loss of the ARA San Juan in 2017.

The arithmetic

The nearest Argentine airfields sit roughly 300 nautical miles from the Falklands, which means an F-16 flying that distance, holding over the target area and returning would have very little fuel margin, and the tanker fleet behind it consists of a small number of ageing KC-130H Hercules rather than anything capable of sustaining a fighter campaign at that radius.

The same geography defined the 1982 campaign, of course, when Argentine Skyhawks and Daggers arrived over San Carlos with minutes of fuel remaining, attacked at low level because they had no other option, and lost heavily in the process. The aircraft available today are considerably better, though the distance between the mainland and the islands remains what it was.

Argentine defence spending sits at roughly 0.7 to 0.8 per cent of GDP, with the 2026 budget aiming to push the combined defence and internal security figure towards 2 per cent, though economic volatility has repeatedly disrupted procurement timelines. The armed forces number around 72,000 active personnel, and personnel costs consume the largest share of the budget, which is the usual pattern in a force that has been under-equipped for a long period.

What is on the islands

British Forces South Atlantic Islands is a permanent joint command established so that the circumstances of 1982, in which the islands were held by a small Royal Marines detachment and had to be retaken by a task force sailing 8,000 miles, cannot recur.

Four Typhoon FGR4 of 1435 Flight, as most readers will be aware, hold quick reaction alert round the clock covering the airspace over the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, supported by A400M and Voyager transport and tanker aircraft, which means British fighters operating in the area have the refuelling that Argentine ones lack.

Ground defence rests on a roulement infantry company, currently drawn from 5th Battalion The Rifles, working alongside the locally recruited Falkland Islands Defence Force, with Sky Sabre providing ground-based air defence and radar coverage from sites including Mount Byron. HMS Medway holds the South Atlantic Patrol Task, and RAF Mount Pleasant is a hardened airfield capable of accepting reinforcement direct from the United Kingdom.

The garrison exercises regularly, and Cape Upholder in early July combined live firing from mortars, snipers and machine guns with a section attack supported by simulated close air support from the Typhoons.

Seizing an airfield defended by fast jets, modern ground-based air defence and infantry, across 300 nautical miles of the South Atlantic, without air superiority, without meaningful tanker support and without any means of sustaining a lodgement once ashore, against a country that has demonstrated it will fight for the islands and now keeps a permanent garrison on them. Unlikely.

Argentine doctrine reflects as much, with the stated regional priority, described as the defence of the south, concerning presence in Patagonia, the policing of national waters and Antarctic logistics rather than anything directed at the islands. The Milei government has signalled no change in its Malvinas policy, which remains a diplomatic claim pursued annually at the United Nations rather than a military one.

Where the modernisation does matter, and it does, is over a longer horizon and across the wider region, because a country moving onto NATO-standard equipment, integrating with American logistics and rebuilding an air force from very little is a different security actor from one that had none of those things, and the British position in the South Atlantic rests on the garrison remaining credible rather than on Argentine weakness continuing indefinitely.

Islanders voted by 1,513 votes to three in the 2013 referendum to remain a British Overseas Territory, and the garrison maintained since 1982 has cost considerably less than the campaign that made it necessary.