40 Years On - The Lessons of the Falklands War

 

40 years have elapsed since the Falkland Islands were liberated, and the local population were freed from dictatorship to choose their destiny again. This short, bloody and wholly unnecessary war was started by dictators, and finished by the British Armed Forces. Even now, four decades later, its lessons continue to resonate and must be considered.

In a series of tweets, the French Navy Chief of Staff has set out thoughts on the enduring lessons of the war, and why it still matters. Many others have done likewise – it has been a period to reflect on why, even many years later, the war still has something to teach us. This article is a short reflection on what the author believes are five enduring lessons we must continue to reflect on.

The first and most simple lesson is that time and again we end up fighting the war we didn’t expect to fight, but we succeed because we keep the skills alive to do so. In 1982 we planned to conduct high intensity armoured warfare in Central Europe for 7 days before the literal end of the world was nigh. Little thought was given to expeditionary warfare at long distance, beyond the amphibious reinforcement of Norway. Naturally we ended up fighting an amphibious war many thousands of miles from home with no anticipation. In 1991 we still expected (just) to fight in Europe, and we ended up fighting the desert, just in time for expeditionary operations to become central to our doctrine, only for deterrence in Europe to come into vogue again in 2022 – in short, we prepare for one, and often end up doing another.

While this may sound familiar ground, what we fail to take into account all too often is that in each case, we succeeded in reconfiguring, often at pace, and drawing on experience and people to be able to deliver what was asked of us. The Falklands worked in part due to legacy skills, residual equipment and training that enabled quick adaptation to new environments. Arguably the enduring lesson is that if you want to succeed, it matters less what you think your primary threat is, and more on how much risk you want to take in culling expertise in other fields.

Maintaining small pockets of excellence – a jungle warfare school, troops acclimatised to the Middle East, arctic warfare experience, you name it, but places where British forces operate and work regularly helps ensure that there is always a seedcorn of experience to draw on and grow if required. Seedcorn matters far more than we sometimes think, and switching something off completely is much harder to regain downstream – success happens when you have the ability to draw on your internal experience to help make something occur quickly, not (re)learn it from scratch.

The second lesson is that victory may have come from the individual acts of bravery by soldiers, sailors and airmen, often in horrific conditions, where they were pushed to act in a way that stretched them to their limits, but the war was won by logistics. The story of the Falklands is as much about the ability of the UK, at incredibly short notice, to mobilise and deploy a Task Force, and sustain it by civilian tankers, support ships, cruise liners and repair vessels and tugs, and do so using airpower to help enable this.

The Falklands War was won because Britain could not just sail, but also sustain the Task Force, reinforcements and keep the fuel flowing. Arguably the centre of gravity was as much the tankers and troop transports, without which there could be no refuelling at sea, no fresh supplies and no landing force, as it was the two carriers. The logistics of the war is a genuinely fascinating subject, showing that for all the focus on weapons and bravery, what won it was the ability to sustain operations, even in the most difficult of weather conditions.

This matters today because the UK continues to maintain a global presence of support bases, airfields and logistics hubs to support military operations, but the civilian ships taken up from trade and their British crews have long gone. How does the UK ensure it can continue to call on vessels, and more critically, skilled sailors in an age of flags of convenience and cheap third world crews? The Merchant Navy British deckhand is an almost extinct breed, and there are relatively few British Officers out there either – the biggest challenge to mounting a major operation like this in future is not the lack of warships, but whether the Merchant Navy could stand up and deliver the hulls and people required.

This civilian contribution touches more widely on the unsung importance of the Civil Service and other enabling arms of the State. We think of the role of the military in the war and in securing victory, but we forget how much was done by civilians to make this happen. It is easy to attack the Civil Servants, but in 1982 the same Civil Servants today seen as idle slackers, more likely to be at Lords than their desks, were the ones who loaded the warships and stored them for operations. They provided the legal advice and policy updates to help ensure the War Cabinet understood what victory could look like, and to help shape the senior level debates that meant Government could direct the military on what it could legally do to secure victory.

More widely diplomats maintained enormous efforts to secure British success in a range of areas from the United Nations to British intelligence officers conducted a range of clandestine work behind the scenes that helped disrupt Argentine efforts to secure Exocet missiles. The work of the staff at GCHQ was critical  in providing SIGINT that shaped how the Task Force could respond to the emerging tactical situation, helping save lives.

Around the UK Civil Servants gave as much as they could to secure an unsung victory in a way that gained little to no attention, but did play a crucial part in helping the front line. This tradition continues today, with British Civil Servants continuing to support the military, from the front lines in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, to helping deliver diplomatic (and presumably intelligence) efforts to support allies in Ukraine. Just because they don’t all wear uniforms does not mean that they did not play a part in the victory – without them it could not happen.

For all that though, the Falklands reminds us that victory is achieved through inflicting horrific violence on others. The tales of the war, particularly of the land battles speak of the timeless experience of soldiers closing with, and killing, the enemy.  The reality of conflict is that it is nasty, brutal and bloody. We have become insulated away from it and it takes events like the Falklands or Ukraine conflict to remind us that the process of killing is anything but mechanical. There is perhaps a danger at times of becoming emotionally disengaged from the act of violence – delivered via twitter on an OSINT feed showing an artillery strike or drone firing an anti-tank missile, it is easy to forget that it comes down to a woman (or a man), with a rifle & bayonet in her hands, closing with, and, if needs be, killing the enemy soldier with her bare hands.  

This lived experience helps shape how forces work, they learn and how they adapt to the future. The last lesson of the conflict is perhaps that we are only as good as our institutional memory. For 40 years the Falklands has dominated the lessons of the Royal Navy, and to a lesser extent the RAF and RN. Soon the last veteran of the war will retire, and it will become a war our predecessors fought.

Institutions have long corporate memories, and can see a great deal during their career. The war in 1982 came at the period in history when the last of the WW2 veterans were retiring from the armed forces- Admiral of the Fleet Lord Lewin joined the Royal Navy in 1939 and was CDS at the time of the conflict, having served throughout WW2. Sir Henry Leach (First Sea Lord at the time) served in the battle against the Scharnhorst. There were veterans of WW2 serving in the Task Force – for example the Master of Atlantic Conveyor, Ian North, tragically lost during the attack.

The war marked the intersection between lived experience of the Imperial-era Royal Navy and the massed gun lines of the Home Fleet, and the modern computer age navy with its anti-ship missiles. The experiences of the Admirals and their early careers, while doubtless fascinating, probably were of little operational or tactical value to the crews at the front line, separated by 8,000 miles and four decades of intervening lessons.

This then raises the question, when is it the right time to stop drawing on lessons from the Falklands conflict (or conflicts in general)? We fixate on the war because it is the last time that much of the component parts of our armed forces came together to operate in this way – much as Staff College fixates on WW2, and campaigns that are now over 80 years in the past, we continue to see lessons drawn from this conflict – and use them to gain credibility with others, by citing them as part of the lived experience of the organisation and its culture. Once the last veterans retire, and the war becomes a historical curiosity, not something that is a lived experience of the workforce, is it time to move on and let go? If not, when do we reach the point of asking if what was learned there is still entirely relevant to the world we face today?

There will always be lessons to be drawn from the tales of sacrifice, leadership by example, failures of policy and successes of improvisation. But we must be wary of being sucked into the trap of assuming that because a future defence decision is taken, it means that by the standards of 1982, ‘the Falkland Islands are at risk’ – they are not. Trying to strike a balance between remembering, learning and gently jettisoning the less relevant baggage is the challenge for the next generation.

Today though is about remembering those who laid down their lives in the service of their nations and those who bear the scars of their efforts to this day. We must hope their efforts were not in vain.