Download - Royal Australian Navy

What were the Key Lessons for Conducting
Expeditionary Operations to Emerge from the
1982 Falkland Islands Campaign?
Lieutenant Commander Malcolm A Ralston, RAN
The Australian Prime Minister has recently said that Australia would
not yield a foot of its territory to another power - he was referring
specifically to the Cocos Islands.
Commodore JA Robinson, RAN (Rtd) 1 -
On 1 April 1982 the 1813 inhabitants of the Falkland Islands lived on the most remote
colony of the British Empire. By 2 April 1982 they had become captives of Argentina
in its invasion to reclaim what they refer to as the Malvinas Islands. 2 The Argentinean
invasion started one of the most ambitious military operations ever undertaken by
Britain in modern history: a war of necessity to retake the Falkland Islands. This was
an expeditionary operation that culminated in the Falklands War and ended some 120
days later on 12 July 1982 when the British government considered active hostilities
to have ceased. 3 Whether the Falklands War was what either Britain or Argentina had
anticipated as the result of their actions is not the subject of this essay, but rather the
lesson of how important a maritime capability and strategy with a joint focus is for
an island nation. 4 This was a lesson that Britain learnt as the result of war, hopefully
Australia will not require the same level of conflict to move forward and realise a truly
joint maritime strategy. 5
Expeditionary in the Australian Context
So expeditionary deployments were in no sense precluded by the
‘defence of Australia’ policies of the 1980s. Nonetheless, they did place
much less emphasis than previous policies on operations to defend
Australian interests beyond the continent, and it is worth asking why. 6
The 1982 Falklands War provided the world with its first taste of modern conventional
war between two states armed with ships, aircraft missiles and land forces. It was a
war that consisted of naval battles, amphibious operations, strategic lift, and air and
land warfare. Furthermore, for Britain it was an expeditionary operation of enormous
undertakings considering the distances involved. 7 A war that was conducted over 7000
miles from home base and 3300 miles from the closet support base, the Ascension
Islands. 8 Once committed to war the British had four operational objectives: establish a