[GonzoGOP]

Argentines have paratroopers ?

Allegedly. Don't know about the quality, they might be the equivalent of the Iranian super weapons we hear about all the time.

To date (2009), the Argentine Army has eleven brigades:

two armored brigades (1st and 2nd),
three mechanized brigades (9th, 10th and 11th),
three mountain brigades (5th, 6th and 8th),
one paratroopers brigade (4th) and
two jungle brigade (3rd and 12th).

The islands are only 480 km from Argentina so they can't just use their helicopters to fly out there. So basically until they can capture a runway it is the C-130s. The can also throw stuff out the back door of some of their turboprop airliners. You could probably drop some supplies that way but I wouldn't want to use it for troops.

[CholeraJoe]

Unless Argentina has improved the quality of its Army in the last 28 years, things will turn out the same way. I became friends with an Argentinian man who was a Lieutenant in one of the units sent to the Malvinas in 1982. Almost all of his soldiers were conscripts, ethnically natives, and poorly educated. Many of them did not speak Spanish very well.

He told the story, that in Basic training, several of his soldiers had never even used a toilet before. Training was a serious challenge and most of his men were from the warm jungles in the north and not used to the sub-freezing temperatures in the Malvinas during winter. He didn’t want to surrender his men at Port Stanley, but had no choice. They refused to fight.