During the Malvinas/Falklands War, the RAF tried to put the Argentine aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo (V-2) out of the game with a daring plan that included Buccaneer aircraft and target information provided by American spy satellites.
Today I would like to bring you an excellent article entitled «Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle», written by Dwayne A. Day (renowned historian and researcher of space programs) and published by the specialized site The Space Review.
In May 1982, the Royal Air Force developed an audacious plan to attack and put out of service the main asset of the Argentine Navy, the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo.
The main obstacle to overcome was distance. Two Blackburn Buccaneer attack planes were to take off from Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, fly over 5,000 kilometers in the dark, refuel multiple times, and then approach the Argentine coast. They would launch anti-ship missiles against the aircraft carrier ARA Veinticinco de Mayo in Argentine territorial waters, sinking it or at least damaging it enough to remove it from the Argentine war effort to defend the Malvinas Islands from the British Task Force.
The Buccaneers would have received information on the location of the Veinticinco de Mayo (May Twenty-Fifth, the date when started the Argentine revolution of 1810) from a Royal Air Force Nimrod long-range patrol aircraft. In turn, the Nimrod crew would obtain an estimated search area from «collateral intelligence.»
According to recently declassified documents, the source of the «collateral intelligence» that would have provided the search area data necessary for the Nimrod to find the carrier (and direct the Buccaneer attack) would have been the top-secret U.S. electronic intelligence satellite called FARRAH.
FARRAH, from the glamour of the «screen» to a space spy
FARRAH was named after movie and TV star Farrah Fawcett. The FARRAH satellite was developed in the late 1970s as part of Program 989, a series of small signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites that the National Reconnaissance Office began launching in 1963. The Program 989 satellites had different electronics payloads focusing on different types of emitters within the Soviet Union. Many of them were designed to intercept anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radars.
FARRAH combined the direction-finding capability of the prior URSULA satellite with the technical intelligence capability of the RAQUEL satellite, meaning it could pinpoint the location of the emitter and gathering detailed information on the signals it collected.
FARRAH also had an onboard digital processor that enabled it to intercept the most sophisticated radars. The geopositioning data and other information on each pulse were processed at a ground station “to develop a complete description of the radar characteristics as well as the location,”.
Improvements in the processing software implemented by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) dramatically shortened the time required to analyze the data obtained by intelligence satellites. Information that used to take days to process now took minutes, allowing the creation of a detailed picture of the sources, type and characteristics of the emitting radars in the area of interest, almost in real time. The new software made it possible to process the data and deliver it to the National SIGINT Operations Center at the National Security Agency within three minutes of intercept.
In response to a Mandatory Declassification Review request, the NRO released more sections of its official signals intelligence satellite history. “FARRAH was the only SIGINT satellite collector capable of collecting data in both the northern and southern hemispheres,” the history states, although according to another source with direct knowledge of the program, most of the satellites had some capability to collect in the southern hemisphere. “This capability was used very effectively to provide the only SIGINT satellite support to the British during the Falklands war from April to June 1982.”.
The plan to attack ARA Veinticinco de Mayo
According to writer Chris Gibson, who obtained declassified RAF documents, the Buccaneer’s mission was «to degrade the combat capability of the main Argentine Navy (ARA) ships operating within the 12 nautical mile limit». And undoubtedly the ARA’s highest value target was the aircraft carrier Veinticinco de Mayo.
From the emissions of the Hollandse Signaalapparaten LW-01 air surveillance radar with which the ship was equipped, intercepted by the FARRAH satellite, it was possible to determine that it was operating in the area of Puerto Belgrano.
With the information from the carrier’s general area of operations, it would be the turn of the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod to approach the area (after some in-flight refueling) and find and determine its precise location and course, to transmit that information to the strike package.
The strike would be delivered by the Blackburn Buccaneers, which would have been armed with two Martel AJ.168 TV TV-guided anti-ship missiles on wing pylons as primary weapons. They would also have carried four 454-kilogram bombs in the weapons bay. The planes would have launched one TV-Martel each, keeping the second as a reserve if they had to make a second attack, and the bombs in reserve if the missiles failed.
The success of the operation depended on surprise. Although the Veinticinco de Mayo had a defensive armament considered old even in that time, it was still guarded by the air defense destroyers ARA Hércules and ARA Santísima Trinidad, the same Type 42 destroyers that provided long range air defence to the British Task Force, with their Sea Dart missiles (although their weakness in short range defence would become evident with the sinking of HMS «Sheffield»). And there was also the possibility that the carrier’s A-4Q Skyhawks could be launched in time to intercept the Buccaneers. So, it was necessary for the carrier and its escort to have as little time as possible to react.
After the attack, the planes would have flown to Chile, landing without warning or permission, in a nation friendly to the United Kingdom, where they would have waited until the end of hostilities to return home. But the damage would have been done.
