How the United States helped Argentina during the Falklands War

On April 30, the United States considered that the negotiations to avoid a war were a failure; they accused Argentina of it. At a conference held in Washington at 11:30, the American mediator at the time, General Alexander Haig, said: "Other things "The United States will respond positively to the material needs of the British forces."

Worse still, the United States has blocked Argentine orders for military equipment and spare parts for $ 3,209,000 already paid.

C & # 39; is, That day, the United States left its role as an apparently impartial mediator and openly acknowledged their alliance with Britain. And the next day, a British Avro Vulcan aircraft bombed the Malvinas military airbase.

However, we know very little that, almost unwillingly, the US government has helped the Argentine armed forces.

The LANDSAT program and Argentina.

This country has provided vital satellite information to Argentina, mainly through the LANDSAT satellite system.

The LANDSAT program (by LAND = terrestrial and SAT = satellite) was launched in 1966 and in 1972, NASA (the US space agency had already put the first satellite (LANDSAT 1) into orbit
Later (in 1979), the program was transferred to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), a scientific agency under the Department of Commerce and therefore part of the executive branch of the North American government.

Argentina has entered LANDSAT technology through a memorandum of understanding between the National Commission for Space Research of Argentina (CNIE) and NASA, entered into force on 7 October 1976.

Through it, Argentina is committed, among other things, to build and operate the Mar Chiquita earth station (in the province of Buenos Aires – now disabled), which would have direct access to the images provided by the satellite sensors. However, it was clear that direct satellite control was the responsibility of the US government.

In March 1982, LANDSAT 3 was active since LANDSAT 2 had ceased operations in February of the same year and four would be launched on 16 July.

The same, 912 kilometers in altitude and in sun-synchronous orbit, crossed the same place every 18 days, with a movement from east to west and, at the latitude of Malvinas, a crossing distance of 100 kilometers was observed.

In mid-April, the islands having already been recovered, Argentina asked NASA (through the usual channels) to take pictures of the Falkland Islands. and the surrounding sea in its pbades from April 21 to 23, request that was handed to the State Department on April 15 and promptly informed at the British Embbady, ​​taking into account that the satellite had to be scheduled to capture the images. He was also transferred to the White House, where he was treated on the 17th, during his evening meeting in the crisis room.

Argentina, which subscribes to the LANDSAT project, asked the United States that the LANDSAT photographic satellite covers the Falkland Islands from 21 to 23 April. This satellite is designed not to provide valuable military information. and he produces photographs at very low resolution (80 meters) … We doubt that Argentina can obtain valuable military information on this occasion. "

Indeed, The satellite's MSS sensor was limited to 80 meters maximum resolution, which resulted in poor quality images. To make matters worse, he encountered some problems after the launch, which further impoverished the end result. However, even these diffuse images worried the allies.

Night calls to the British Embbady

On the same evening, Lawrence Eagleburger (Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Number Three Secretary of State) telephoned Nicholas Henderson (British Ambbadador in Washington), indicating that the leaking the news was a problem. US television channels and that this could affect relations between countries. C & # 39; is to say, It was not clear that the United States was helping Argentina in its recognition efforts.

For this reason, Eagleburger indicated that it had been agreed that the State Department would deny the press any help for Argentina and that, if the spokesperson was in a hurry by questions crossed, it should indicate that Argentina (as the United Kingdom) had participated in a civilian program. satellite and other concerns should be addressed directly to NASA.

Cynically, the answer that NASA had to give was already prepared. It consisted in informing: The characteristics of the satellite program, B) Indicate that a request from Argentina had been received and c) Point this would be accomplished. Similarly, it should be noted that this was a civilian program, devoid of military value.

He also indicated again that there would be no information that would be of interest to Argentineans but, in any case, "NASA would not be allowed to comply with any other requirements of Argentina" in this region.

Paradoxically, a few days ago, Britain had requested LANDSAT imagery from all over the Argentine continent, order that has not generated any kind of problem among Americans.

Finally, given the low resolution of the sensor and the delay in delivering the seized material (the treatment took a few days, even lowered almost immediately), it was also considered that the images could not affect the security of the device. Strength. British tasks (which was far from the islands), the satellite took the nine scheduled images.

But, of all the images taken by the satellite, only two were recorded by Mar Chiquita station, one for the last of 22 and another for the next one (taken by the islands themselves), which indicates that the South Atlantic Ocean was not allowed to be badyzed with the satellite. The "contradictory" images, that is to say, remained closed to the public at the end of 1982, as if they had never been taken.

It must be remembered again that all this happened in April, when the United States still fulfilled its role of "impartial" mediator.

Another new order It must be said that the satellite broke

In addition, on the evening of April 22, another Argentine request arrived to obtain, now, LANDSAT images of South Georgia from April 24 to 25, as well as of the surrounding sea on the 26th.

Shortly after, Eagleburger spoke at the British Embbady and, with the knowledge and approval of Haig, it was decided that Argentina would be denied access to the images (which the satellite was already taking), citing "technical problems", especially at a time when Britain was preparing to re-invade the islands, already having a naval presence in its vicinity. In all cases, there was total cloud cover, so the usefulness of the images would have been null or extremely limited.

The last Argentinean order dates back to May 5th, for the images of the same Malvinas Islands, from the 7th to the 12th.

Although the British were again informed and pressured to be refused, claiming that the Argentineans did not want to obtain intelligence data that with these images, they were taken and allowed to be downloaded at Mar Chiquita.

On the 12th, they told Henderson "with some shame" that this time (for the last and only time), they had complied with the protocol agreement as soon as possible. Like a paradox, the only time they met Argentina was when they had already turned to England.

Sadly the images showed only a thick cloud cover over the islands, as they quickly discovered the British.
We could say then, and everything is said here, that NASA helped to provide satellite information to Argentina (even reluctantly and not with the magnitude it should have done, in addition to informing and sharing with the United Kingdom all that had been obtained). But they were forced to do it.

According to the Memorandum of Understanding between Argentina and the United States in force for the 1982 conflict (signed in Buenos Aires on April 6, 1981), NASA needed to "program" satellite sensors to cover the earth station area (which, for Mar Chiquita, concerned a large area of ​​Latin America and the Atlantic and South Pacific oceans), as well as to transmit the data obtained "directly to the station" (paragraph 2 of the memorandum).

It was not free, but it was agreed (among other obligations for Argentina) a price of US $ 200,000 per year, which could increase over the years.

Beyond the legal obligations (which, as we have seen, have not been fully respected), the truth is that denying satellite information to Argentina would have meant acknowledging that the LANDSAT program had military utility, which could lead countries to ban photographs of their territories. As a result, the US has allowed certain images to be eventually obtained by Argentina.

What did we do with the satellite images?

It is interesting to badyze what information was obtained from these images and what to repeat, since the MSS sensor involved a maximum resolution of 80 meters.

Although, primarily, it has been indicated that they had no value for military recognition (Clearly, because they were the images they took from the visible and infra-red spectrum with low geometric, temporal and radiometric resolution), extensive badyzes by the UK Ministry of Defense concluded that under optimal conditions (without cloud), the multispectral (MSS) sensor could detect ships.

However, in Argentina, "the possibility of locating individual vessels even though they are large" was discarded and "the possibility of locating groups of large vessels could have been studied" but "that was not was made during the month of April 1982 ".

In any case, the limited amount of useful images finally delivered by the satellite when it pbades every 18 days in the regionto rule out that the same thing could have even minimally affected military operations.

It must be added that Argentina also did not benefit from previous LANDSAT satellite pbades (to create a satellite map of the islands, which would make it possible to establish beaches, vegetation, etc.), so much so that "in the subsequent works of the conflict, a satellite mosaic of Malvinas was built"

Despite all these elements to rule out a greater utility of LANDSAT, an Argentine scientist (Dr. Cora Sneibrun) "understood that with the 80 meters of definition range left on the satellite, Americans could search in the area of conflict: it was possible for us to detect English ships, but if we sent an infrared wave to the satellite and followed the area around the islands, we could locate the wake of the ships because the turbines are heating up the water, in based on the heat we detected, we could deduce how far the vessel was, because by relating it to the degree of temperature observed, we would know how long it had traveled through the keyhole an image of fantastic dimensions, but this genius worked … "

Like that too, The United States also allowed Argentina to continue to rely on information from its TRANSIT satellites, Doppler effect coordinate measurement (although the system was blocked for the extreme south of Argentina) and GOES and NOAA weather conditions, still received with some delay.

With the images provided, then, it can be said that the United States supported Argentina in the Malvinas conflict in 1982. What they did not want to do.