Argentina is not a credible power able to threaten Falklands

Argentina has spent two years rebuilding an air force it let wither for a decade, and every new arrival brings back the question of what it means for the Falklands.

Argentina agreed in 2024 to buy 24 second-hand F-16AM/BMs from Denmark for around $300 million, a deal the Milei goverment called the most important military acquisition in fifty years. The first six arrived at Río Cuarto in Córdoba on 5 December 2025. Six more follow each December to 2028, and the fleet is working up with VI Air Brigade at Tandil.

Argentina retired it’s last supersonic fighters in 2015 and had no interceptor capability at all for nearly a decade after that. The F-16 closes the gap and brings Argentine aircrew onto Western avionics, weapons and logistics standards for the first time in a generation.

The first of a batch of American M1126 Strykers has also arrived, for an army still running TAM medium tanks and M113s, and there’s also a contract with Terma of Denmark for F-16 electronic warfare work covering software, mission planning and ground support. The 2026 budget carries a number of capital lines for hangars, ground support equipment and base protection at Tandil and Río Cuarto out to 2028.

The navy has had very little of this, as readers will know. The surface fleet is MEKO 360 destroyers and MEKO 140 corvettes, most of them needing maintenance or mid-life work that hasn’t been funded, the last S-2T Turbo Trackers are under evaluation for retirement, and there has been no submarine force since the ARA San Juan was lost in 2017.

Range, fuel, tankers

The nearest Argentine airfields are around 300 nautical miles from the islands. An F-16 flying that out, holding for any useful time and returning has very little margin left, and the tanker fleet that could support it is a small number of ageing KC-130Hs. That same geography shaped 1982, when Skyhawks and Daggers reached San Carlos with minutes of fuel and attacked at low level because they had no other option.

Defence spending is around 0.7 to 0.8 per cent of GDP. The 2026 budget aims to push defence and internal security together towards 2 per cent, though economic volatility has broken Argentine procurement timelines before and will probably do it again. There are about 72,000 active personnel and wages take the largest share of the budget, as they often do.

What’s on the islands

British Forces South Atlantic Islands is a permanent joint command, set up so that 1982, when the islands were held by a Royal Marines detachment and had to be retaken by a task force sailing 8,000 miles, cannot happen again.

Four Typhoon FGR4s of 1435 Flight hold QRA round the clock over the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, with A400M and Voyager providing transport and tanking. British fighters in the area have the refuelling Argentine ones lack.

Ground defence is a roulement infantry company, currently form 5th Battalion The Rifles, working with the locally recruited Falkland Islands Defence Force. Sky Sabre provides ground-based air defence, with radar coverage from Mount Byron among other sites. HMS Medway holds the South Atlantic Patrol Task and Mount Pleasant is hardened, able to take reinforcement direct from the UK. Cape Upholder in early July ran mortars, snipers and machine guns on the range with a section attack supported by simulated CAS from the Typhoons.

Taking an airfield defended by fast jets, modern GBAD and infantry, across 300 nautical miles, without air superiority, without tanking and without any way of supplying a lodgement, from a country that has fought for the islands once and now garrisons them permanently, is not a plan anybody in Buenos Aires is seriously working on. Not outside of the internet forums, anyway