seem to be overlooking the fact that we did have people on the mainland, etc etc etc.
Which is fine for intelligence on ships leaving port however, unless you've a sub waiting for them to come out, it doesn't help much once they're actually over the horizon. It's not like they just steam in straight lines to make it easy for you… The south Atlantic is a big place and there is a lot of water to cover between Argentina and the Falklands. Perhaps we could have done what the Argentinians did and use aircraft such as Boeing 707's for ocean reconnaissance. I'm not sure we could have relied on them not shooting them down however (Harriers shepherded Argentinian military 707's away from the task force on several occasions during the passage from the UK).
I was a naval intelligence officer in the post Falklands period (mid to late 80's) and so know what intelligence sources were available to us then, regarding ship movements etc. Without access to land based assets deploying from the Falklands themselves it would have been quite tricky to find even large ships like their carrier.
People have an often very unrealistic idea of capability etc. For example the Argentinean airforce's actions during the Falklands has an almost mythical quality now, however the reason so many of their bombs didn't go off or bounced over ships is becuase they were forced down to low level operations to reduce their very high casualty rate. Despite knowing that this was causing issues with the effectiveness of their bombs they still continued to do it (they eventually obtained new fuses from Spain to address the issue), because they thought the alternative was an increased casualty rate (although our forces worked out that if they'd used pop-up tactics for bomb release they'd have been a lot more effective and possibly with a lower casualty rate). Undoubtedly they were very brave but they did suffer badly from a number of things – not least from their politicians starting the war without proper preperations (they reacted to a political opportunity instead of invading later in the year as planned). This meant that the wrong forces were used in the invasion (raw recruits early in their conscription rather than those who were closer to the end of their period and therefore better trained, only 5 exocets delivered and not yet properly trained on the equipment, very limited in-flight refueling capability, no proper plans to make use of the runway at Stanley for fast jets – e.g. equipment to lengthen it, for fuel storage and most importantly to protect it from attack). The lack of in-flight refueling was the worst thing for the air-force – their Mirage's and Daggers were almost useless as they had so little fuel that they couldn't vary their approach to Falklands meaning that it was easy for the Harrier CAP to intercept them on the way in, with a corresponding high casualty rate. They were withdrawn for that reason (it was spun as defence against possible mainland attacks by the Vulcans even though they knew those were quite unlikely) until they got desperate later in the conflict and had to use them again. This left the aging Skyhawks to attack without air cover, hence the low level approach and the issues with bomb fusing. If the Argentineans could have refueled their fighters on the way then it would have been a very different air conflict over the Falklands – with the Skyhawks able to attack the ships while the Daggers and Mirages engaged the Harriers while carrying enough fuel to be effective.
Most military commentary I've seen things that we'd have been unlikely to lose the conflict even under those circumstances, but that a negotiated "draw" would have been quite possible.
