Argentina Military: News

GarryB wrote:

Didn't an SA-7 bring down a Harrier in the Falklands conflict?

In the Falklands war, several Sa-7 missiles arrived. From Libya and Peru.
They were used on a few occasions, but never shot down any enemy aircraft.
Many in good condition were captured by the English after the surrender.
In the 1980s collection "War Machine" there is a photo of an English soldier with a captured Sa-7.





Here is an extensive note on this missile in the Malvinas:

https://malvinas25.rssing.com/chan-6101334/article146.html

Yes, I have that issue and series of books... they came out in the 1980s, I also had the multi part magazine on the Falklands War specifically...

There was mention of a Sea Harrier being shot down on a ground attack mission and speculation that it would have been something like a Strela that did it due to the engine nozzle arrangement on the SH, but I have since seen claims it was a Roland missile that brought the aircraft down.

Can't be sure of the truth of course, would not surprise me for them to claim it was the European missile rather than the Soviet one for propaganda purposes...


BTW your article does not start well...

To make a short explanation, many say that the SA-7 were better than the Blowpipe, but in reality it is not, and compared with the Stingers less effective still, the summary of the generations of portable missiles would be:

1st Generation: only engage in the nozzles of the aircraft (e.g. Redeye, the SA-7 Strela)
2nd Generation: in addition you can shoot in front of the aircraft attackers (e.g. Stinger, Igla).
3rd Generation: in addition guided to GO, have the devices UV led ,which increases their percentage of takedowns. (E.g. Latest version of the Stinger B, SA18,Mistral)

Blowpipe is not good at all, it wasn't effective in Afghanistan either, and the generation list is wrong, Igla and Igla-1, which are SA-16 and SA-18 respectively are third generation, with SA-14 being second gen.

GarryB wrote:Yes, I have that issue and series of books... they came out in the 1980s, I also had the multi part magazine on the Falklands War specifically...

There was mention of a Sea Harrier being shot down on a ground attack mission and speculation that it would have been something like a Strela that did it due to the engine nozzle arrangement on the SH, but I have since seen claims it was a Roland missile that brought the aircraft down.

Can't be sure of the truth of course, would not surprise me for them to claim it was the European missile rather than the Soviet one for propaganda purposes...


BTW your article does not start well...

To make a short explanation, many say that the SA-7 were better than the Blowpipe, but in reality it is not, and compared with the Stingers less effective still, the summary of the generations of portable missiles would be:

1st Generation: only engage in the nozzles of the aircraft (e.g. Redeye, the SA-7 Strela)
2nd Generation: in addition you can shoot in front of the aircraft attackers (e.g. Stinger, Igla).
3rd Generation: in addition guided to GO, have the devices UV led ,which increases their percentage of takedowns. (E.g. Latest version of the Stinger B, SA18,Mistral)

Blowpipe is not good at all, it wasn't effective in Afghanistan either, and the generation list is wrong, Igla and Igla-1, which are SA-16 and SA-18 respectively are third generation, with SA-14 being second gen.

The article is not mine.
I only put it to illustrate the topic.
If you read it, you realize that there is even talk of laziness to handle the missile, because it is in the Russian language.
I did not stop to analyze the models that it names, but I will take it into account to reread.
I have read quite a bit about the Malvinas and I have always known about the presence of the Soviet missiles, but I had never read that they had been shot down.
If you have visited the military forums, you should know, that they mostly have pro-Western and anti-Russian/Soviet stances.
Where Western is best and Russian is inferior.
In Argentina it is not an exception.
Let's not forget that the leaders of our armed forces, since 1955 (overthrow of Perón) were captured by liberalism and served the interests of the United States.
During the Cold War, from the different sepoy governments, a line was lowered where everything was biased by the confrontation against communism.
Oddly enough, that view still prevails today.
It is enough to enter the forums and see how pro-Yankee positions are always defended.

It is striking that Soviet weapons were not directly accepted during the conflict.
What's more: during it and after. Until now, they are still begging for Western weaponry.
Thus, the great aeronaval power that we had until the 1980s was lost.
In Argentina we describe these attitudes as "sepoys".

So called western experts went on about how wonderful the Sea Harrier was, but honestly against the Soviets it would have suffered, because most Soviet air to air missiles of the period included long range IR guided missiles... ie the standard BVR AAM of the MiG-23 was the R-23 and then R-24 upgraded missiles in both SARH and IR guided versions. The same for the R-40 missiles used by the MiG-25 and the R-27s used by the later MiG-29s and Su-27s.

Even with flares the Sea Harrier would be horribly vulnerable to IR guided missiles and as I mentioned the SA-7 was not a current MANPAD in the Soviet/Warsaw pact in the early 1980s... they had already replaced it with the SA-14 and by the mid 1980s were putting Igla and Igla-1 into service.... when they captured Stingers in Afghanistan they found they were inferior to the missiles they were already making... the main upgrade to the Igla was in the 2000s with the Igla-S which improved the seeker a little but most importantly added a proximity fuse system to the missile to make it effective against small targets like drones or missiles.

If Argentina had MiG-23 in service instead of Skyhawks and Mirage fighters it would have been rather interesting... though the Soviets would have had to have released the R-23 or R-24 missiles for it to have a decent effect, normally export MiG-23s had AA-2 missiles or sometimes AA-8... neither of which had amazing performance, but carrying R-23 or R-24 BVR missiles, they could have fired the IR guided missile first and then a delay and then a SARH missile... the IR guided missile should get a lock at a good distance because the Harrier almost always has its engine nozzles visible from the front... while manouvering to evade the IR missile they would lose speed and need to use max engine power making them vulnerable to get hit by a follow up SARH missile.

They could have carried two SARH and two heavy IR guided missiles at a time with a centreline fuel tank to maximise time in the air.

There is enormous bias on the internet regarding Soviet and Russian equipment... normally the ignorance comes from ignoring their position and requirements... they needed interceptors more than they needed fighters so when the MiG-25 was first seen it was assumed to be an F-15 type aircraft, but that was their Su-27 family.

The F-15 is a clear example of actual copying by the US... they actually decided to make a plane directly based on a Soviet plane and take the risk that better US this and better US that will result in a better aircraft, but what they ended up with was a different aircraft, a fighter instead of an interceptor.

To be fair the range of anti ship missiles the Soviets had was extensive, but would require Argentina to buy the whole ships or subs that carried them... or very large aircraft like the Tu-16 or Tu-22M3... which would have been expensive, their Kh-35 was not ready for use in the early 1980s, and their main anti ship missiles were too big to be carried by tactical aircraft.

The Argentine pilots were good in attack, and in air-to-air combat the English pilots had much more training.
Supposedly the Mirages were better than the Harriers and Sea Harriers.
The main problem was that the leadership of the Process did not want to get too close to the USSR.

No, their problem was that Britain took the latest model Sidewinders out of HATO stocks and use them when they were not supposed to... the US of course OKed that.

The Lima and Mike model Sidewinders they used allowed them to be launched from any angle with a good chance of a hit, but of course they tended to manouver to get a tail shot to increase the kill probability.

The Argentine pilots were incredibly brave and very skillful and got a few kills on ships using bombs which is not actually as easy as it sounds.

They often flew in low behind the radar shadow of the islands so they could roll in and sneak attack the ships in harbour or close to shore without alerting the Sea Harriers.

The fact that it was a small carrier with only helicopter based AEW meant it sat further off shore and away from the conflict area to keep it safer, and the low flight speed of the Harrier meant the ships it was supposed to be supporting didn't really get properly supported.

If they had a fixed will full sized carrier they could have used Phantoms and Buccaneers, which would have been much more capable and effective in the air superiority and attack roles respectively... they probably would not have lost any ships at all.

GarryB wrote:If they had a fixed will full sized carrier they could have used Phantoms and Buccaneers, which would have been much more capable and effective in the air superiority and attack roles respectively... they probably would not have lost any ships at all.

Yeah I think the whole Harrier program was a bit of a mistake. In terms of actual combat capability it was a dud. I mean it is an interesting concept but not that viable in practice. The fact it did as well as it did says much about the pilots more than the aircraft really.

GarryB wrote:No, their problem was that Britain took the latest model Sidewinders out of HATO stocks and use them when they were not supposed to... the US of course OKed that.

The Lima and Mike model Sidewinders they used allowed them to be launched from any angle with a good chance of a hit, but of course they tended to manouver to get a tail shot to increase the kill probability.

The Argentine pilots were incredibly brave and very skillful and got a few kills on ships using bombs which is not actually as easy as it sounds.

They often flew in low behind the radar shadow of the islands so they could roll in and sneak attack the ships in harbour or close to shore without alerting the Sea Harriers.

The fact that it was a small carrier with only helicopter based AEW meant it sat further off shore and away from the conflict area to keep it safer, and the low flight speed of the Harrier meant the ships it was supposed to be supporting didn't really get properly supported.

If they had a fixed will full sized carrier they could have used Phantoms and Buccaneers, which would have been much more capable and effective in the air superiority and attack roles respectively... they probably would not have lost any ships at all.

Air-to-air combat took place without the need to use the advantage on the English Sidewinders.
As I said, in this type of confrontation the United Kingdom had more experience than the Argentine pilots.
You focus too much on technical issues and forget the main thing: politics.
The Argentine Armed Forces were embedded in the National Security Doctrine, in which they were an element to control the population.
Therefore, they had more experience in bombing than in air-to-air combat.
They had a counterrevolutionary thought.
That is why so many precautions regarding Soviet armament.
With regard to the "Malvinas War", the original objective was to occupy with few troops to negotiate.
The situation became tense until it reached the war, and many errors entered there, all stemming from the original plan that had not prioritized a large supply of the islands, nor, for example, building a runway suitable for jet planes.
Other "mistakes" followed.
In my opinion, the main defect was that there was no will for a war to the last consequences with the United Kingdom, which had the support of the people.
It is enough to see that when the surrender of Puerto Argentino was known, a popular demonstration took place, which shouted: Do not surrender. which was suppressed.

Regarding the embarked aircraft, the British had the aircraft carrier "Invincible" and also used the container ship "Atlantic Conveyor" (which was sunk) in a similar mission, embarking helicopters and Harrier aircraft.
Besides, then the "Illustrious" (twin of the "Invincible") would arrive.
If these ships had been damaged or destroyed, there was still the United States, which could have provided them with some of its aircraft carriers.

The Atlantic Conveyer was a container ship and was not rigged for launching aircraft... it as transporting aircraft to be deployed to land to operate from there.

The fear of them being sunk led to them sitting further back from the islands, which reduced their effectiveness in protecting ships and ground forces.

If they still had the older fixed wing carriers in service with Phantoms even if they did sit further back it had proper AWACS platforms to give a much better air picture and would have eliminated the radar shadow the islands created that some Argentine pilots used for their attacks... the shadow is created by the ships radar being blocked by the islands so enemy aircraft flying at low levels behind the island can't be detected by ship radar.

They of course could be detected by AWACS platforms carried by the older bigger carriers.

Lack of air to air training for the Argentine pilots was certainly an issue, but as I said, if they had MiG-23s with BVR missiles the Harriers would have been at a very serious disadvantage.

The MiGs could have used their speed and launched missiles from standoff ranges and never gotten within 10km of the Harriers... giving the MiGs a chance of a hit and the Harriers no chance at all to get a hit.

MiG-23s can also operate from fairly rough grass strips too so they could have operated from the island...

But it was not to be.

BTW the US was being very careful not to get involved... it was already helping Britain because it had signed agreements with central and south american countries that in return for doing what they say that the US would protect them from European colonial powers... which they clearly didn't.

There would be no carriers lent to Britain... losing a carrier might have stopped the conflict.

In a previous comment I forgot to put that in the English fleet the aircraft carrier "Hermes" came along with the "Invincible" aircraft carrier.

The real difference was on the ground and it was mostly that British soldiers were trained to kill.

In war time it has been found that only a small percentage of soldiers actually aim at the enemy and try to kill them because most people are simply not natural killers.

About 2% are psychopaths who are happy to kill and have no problems with that.

Western military forces do rather well in war because the training creates psychopaths that try to kill their enemy, which is great during a conflict but leads to problems when they come home and have to come to terms with what they did and what they lost...

During the period HATO was in Afghanistan the suicide rate for western soldiers in situ and after coming home was higher than the numbers killed by the enemy and accidents combined.

The west has worked out how to train people to kill people... but they don't seem to have bothered to work out how to deprogram these guys afterwards to help them deal with what they did and the people they killed... especially as by then it will be clear the reasons for the conflict were never what they were presented as being to get them to go

About the Danish F-16 for Argentina.


In recent years, the alleged purchase of Danish F-16 aircraft for Argentina has been debated.
The truth is that at the moment they are only rumors.
In the Argentine forums (run by pro-Western people) they are desperate for that plane to arrive.
I have even participated in one called Aviación Argentina, where they banned me several times for expressing my opinion contrary to that purchase and putting links to news from the Danish Air Force, where they say that they will continue operating the plane until 2027.
Apart from the 19 that they gave to Ukraine.
According to the "experts" personnel from the Argentine Air Force went to Denmark and inspected the planes, of which this country "reserved" about 24 planes (8 of them two-seaters). Even several news reports say that Colombians have also reserved planes.
I wonder: Does Denmark have 43 airplanes? where so many will come from, to cover the needs of the three countries.
Until now, the only real thing is the planes for Ukraine, a country from which they are training pilots and they promise to give it 6 in these months.
For me, it is not reliable to continue betting on buying Western weapons.
Furthermore, I don't see that there is verifiable information about everything that is talked about.
And it seems to me that the Danes could donate more planes to Ukraine.
So for now we have to take that news with a grain of salt.
We already see that rumors about airplanes have been repeated for decades and the only thing that arrived were the SEMs that have not even been able to fly.

Perhaps the plan is that once Kiev gets their aircraft and they don't do any better than the Fulcrums and Flankers they already had... in fact they do worse because they can't be dispersed to rough airfields, then perhaps HATO as a whole will OK the sale to Argentina without UK objections because the UK will pretend that if the Russians can shoot them down then so can they...

Argentina not getting into BRICS was a major mistake. The BRICS nations, namely Brazil, China, are Argentina's top trade partners.

Exports:


Imports:


Continuing this servile attitude towards the Anglosphere serves Argentina no useful purpose.

Argentina also exports crude petroleum to the US, and imports refined oil products. Which is totally retarded.

Let's agree that previous governments, supposedly leftist or "non-aligned", did not have the courage to break dependence on the USA.
It is enough to see that they did not buy almost any Russian weapons, as Chávez did in Venezuela.
In fact, until the previous government, Western weapons continued to be purchased. The F-16 issue comes from there, it is not Milei's idea.
What I mentioned about the pro-Western lobbies was maintained during the leftist governments of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner.
For example, the modernization of the Argentine TAM tank is carried out with Israeli technology.
If there is no will for real change, it ends up paving the way for governments that are more servile to the Empire.
And to make matters worse, all the "left" discourse of previous governments was frowned upon by the people, as it was used in an opportunistic way.
And that also gives support to Milei, which he takes advantage of to get closer to the USA, Israel and other Western countries.

Privatization serves the globalist parasite oligarchy.   The state does not need to own and run every business including the corner grocery store, but some sectors
are best managed by the state.   This includes electricity generation and highway construction.    In the Kanadian province of Ontario, we had a neoliberal stooge
called Mike Harris in the 1990s who privatized Ontario Hydro (the electrical power company).   This has not resulted in any improvement and only resulted in higher
prices.   Also, the debt of Ontario Hydro got downloaded on the rate payers (this includes individuals and not just companies).    You would think that with
privatization things like debt would be the responsibility of the new owners.    We also had sweetheart deals for toll highways but the road infrastructure is neglected
and congestion is approaching critical mass.

Thankfully in Russia the neoliberal koolaid consumption was stopped in 1998 by Primakov and Putin did not return to it.   Argentina is infested by an oligarchy and
what you see is machinations to keep their gravy train in motion.   Once you see the pattern, the problems become clear.   But most people are distracted with
left vs. right theater.   Both sides are corrupt and serve the interests of the parasite owner class.    People who extoll these parasites as entrepreneurs are retards.
A lot of left and right "thinkers" engage in reductionism and worship childish models of reality.

I don't like to enter into the childish ideas of many forums, where they spend their time dreaming about the weapons that Argentina should buy.

You need to get your economy booming and improve things for your people so you are spending spare money and not savings or future debt for your military.

Any country has potential if you work together.

But here's an example: if we buy Western ones, the most we can aspire to is (apparently) some 40-year-old F-16s or some SEMs, of a similar age.
Now, if we buy Russian, there are no impediments. If we have the will and the money, we could acquire MiG-35, Su-35 and even Su-57.

Of course I am biased, but also with Russian weapons you could set up local production of things you could use in volume and possibly set up support centres for other countries in your region to send things to be repaired and overhauled.

The core problem is to be smart. Don't licence produce 5th gen heavy fighters because when you only make three or four dozen they will be eye wateringly expensive and those skill wont be much good for anything else.

Joint development and production on the MiG-UTS, or the Baikal light aircraft that you could make in numbers and use in your country and export in your region.

But of course military cooperation is only a tiny part of it, commercial cooperation... Russia is an enormous country and has issues out in the hard to reach places with villiages not connected to road or rail or electrical grids... and the Russian economy was terrible in the 1990s with the west actively making things worse for their benefit... there will be ideas and solutions that might work in Russia but not in Argentina, but there will be other solutions that can work anywhere. Looking at all the factors and interests and issues and I am sure Argentina will become successful. It would be much easier through BRICS, but I am sure they will understand the enormous pressure your country is under from the US, so joining later is better late than never...

This leads to the proposition that these sectors that do so much lobbying, due to the Western side, are traitors to the Homeland.

There were people in Russia who believed what was best for the west was best for Russia in the long run... because the west runs the world so you keep the rulers of the world happy and you should benefit... but Russia never did benefit... they did all sorts of good things to help the US and the west and got no respect for it.

They allowed HATO to ship things through Russia and neighbouring countries to support their operations in Afghanistan because they thought they might actually do some good there... this is all forgotten now of course... like promises not to expand HATO were forgotten too.

Russia has realised the west is only interested in the US, and only the 1% in the US... the US as a whole didn't benefit from 20 years in Afghanistan... it was the 1% that benefited from that circus... which is why they stayed for 20 years.

Argentina has to realise the west does not run the world... the west is not the world... this Ukraine debacle makes that clear... even with the help of all of HATO and the EU and G7, the Ukraine is losing and losing horribly... and by that I mean it is losing several generations of men... a demographic disaster for the country...

The west went into that conflict with supreme confidence... it will be decided on the Battlefield... and they were right... it will be... because Russia can't trust any country in the west to keep its word.

Argentina also exports crude petroleum to the US, and imports refined oil products. Which is totally retarded.

Russia can certainly help with refining capacity for Argentina so they can process their own resources and sell finished products instead of raw materials.

For infrastructure also what it happens is that the new private owners are only interested in taking the more financially advantageous part and completely disregard other parts important for the people but maybe which were loss making.

This has been already mentioned by Garry and other users also in other threads

An airline is an example. Here in New Zealand to get access to the Australian market the Aussies forced us to buy a failing Australian airline to be allowed to fly to Australia, which automatically gave them access to our air market. New Zealand is a long narrow country with 2/3rds of the population in the north and so of course the Aussie airlines flew to our main centres and took customers from our airline, but our airline had to service the entire country... many places there were very few customers so obviously the airline was taking a loss because regions would complain about a lack of air service even if it was only a trickle of people actually flying on a regular basis.

It is simple a challenge for the national airline to monitor the traffic and to use aircraft suitable for the normal flow with aircraft available for use if there is a sudden spike. Having a 747 flying to a tiny corner of the country to pick up a group of 5 people and you are not going to last long as a business. Of course with a new covered stadium built allowing 747s to land at the local airport means the bigger bands can come and play.

The problem sometimes is that for state controlled infrastructures and companies some stooges are put in leadership positions just because of good connections (but is not really different in private firms) and sometimes people believe that if you get a place in a state company then you do not have to work seriously anymore, since is almost impossible to be fired.

There is the other factor of the right wing governments of rich people who are pissed off at state owned assets like hospitals and try to underfund them and undermine them so when they fail they can claim state funded things don't work and you need private enterprise to really get the best out of it.

They end up selling sectors to their mates who pay very little for the asset who then often fire everyone and hire back 1/3rd of the staff and skim off the profits... normally by the third of fourth year they are making more in profit than they used to buy the damn thing, and of course all complaints about the service and performance actually getting worse is suppressed or ignored... because taking it back and making it a state owned enterprise is communism...

The real annoying thing is that most of the time the actual buyers of the state owned assets in any country are always foreign. I seem to remember the first owners of New Zealands Telecom network were Canadian, but they asset strip and then sell it on for an enormous profit each time it is hard to keep track.

It is enough to see that they did not buy almost any Russian weapons, as Chávez did in Venezuela.

This is a military thread, but trade with Russia is about so much more than just weapons... even just learning to be independent from the west... Russia has gone from an energy exporter that imported most other things, to a country that can produce its own food and process its own energy into everything it needs, and clearly has the production capacity of weapons and ammo to defend itself too.

Imagine a situation where the UKs economy drops away because of the decisions its governments have made against its own peoples interests to satisfy the US mainly, and an Argentina that eventually joins BRICS and increases trade and production and grows and develops as a country that has positive growth rates for the next 30 years... the people on the Falklands might choose to change their allegiances...

With a bit of Russia oil technology, an Argentine company might win contracts to explore for oil around the islands and bring money... you could bet once the oil is flowing the British will move in and try to take over... they did that with the Rugby World Cup... they didn't think it would work so they let Australia and New Zealand and Japan organise the first one. Without Japanese money making it happen there would be no Rugby World Cup. You wouldn't think that the way it is run these days.

What I mentioned about the pro-Western lobbies was maintained during the leftist governments of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner.

Most of your equipment in the Falklands war was western so I suspect your military has a history of western gear and cooperation with western countries, and that would colour the views of those retired soldiers who are likely military advisors to your governments.

In the Indian military there are those that favour French and foreign weapons, and those that seem to favour Soviet/Russian stuff... it probably depends on what they used in their careers.

For the same reason Apple computers often do very special deals for schools and universities because they know that if you train on a type of computer then you get used to it, so if you move to business then you are more likely to favour the familiar... but obviously in business the new rookie recruits in the IT department never get to select the new computers.

And that also gives support to Milei, which he takes advantage of to get closer to the USA, Israel and other Western countries.

They might drop you a few scraps from the table, but they wont let you develop and grow. If they are trying to contain Russia and China there is no way they will let Argentina live the American dream... especially when only 1% of Americans get anywhere near that.

This is the game they try to play with everyone...

It has a lot of natural riches and is not blocked like Cuba, to take an example in Latin America.

Not blocked yet. If they think you will turn to BRICS you might find you suddenly have US/Cuba like relations unless you give US companies concessions to access your mineral and material wealth...

There is no difference at all among them. Whatever they said before coming to power all of them pursued the same anti Italian and pro EU and pro American democratic party policy (or better called pro American deep state).

There is an excellent British TV series called "Yes Minister" and it follows the career of a guy called Hackett who gets into politics all wide eyed and thinking he can fix everything and everyone will be happy. The follow on series is called "Yes, Prime Minister" and follows his career as prime minister. Once in power he finds out all his great ideas to fix things have been tried multiple times before by smarter people than him and they all failed. The programmes often started with a problem or an issue and the politician claims to know better while the civil servant suggests another course of action. All through the episode the politician tries to implement his idea and eventually gets it in place and it fails as the civil servant advised at the start and the only solution to save the day is the implement the idea of the civil servant which works out to be the best band aid to the problem and let someone else fix it later on.

Going into a job saying what you will do is horseshit, because when you get there you find it has been done before and never works and what they end up doing is covering up the issue or passing it down to the next slob to do this job because most of the time there is no solution.

Meloni Is basically the same as the former leader of the centre left party (Letta), i would dare to say that she is basically Enrico Letta with a blonde wig, and the current leader of the democratic party is a woman whose only "merit" is being a relatively young bisexual (Elly Schlein).

Here in New Zealand we have National and Labout as the two main parties and there is very little difference between them despite Labour claiming to be left and National claiming to be right.

Very much a case of two types of shit. Cat Shit and Dog Shit... no real choice at all. Both parties have privatised things and blamed the other party for everything that went wrong, but National is the more right wing of the two. National once held a referendum to decide if they should continue with privatisation and the result was about 75% of the population said no. They kept going anyway because the referendum was nonbinding.

You ask the people for advice and you ignore it because it goes against what you want to do.

A bit like setting up a shooting range that faces a primary schools playing field and asking an engineer if this paper is thick enough to be safe for the kids to play in the field while people are using the shooting range. The engineer says no, but you already bought the paper...

However, with the current sanctions and situation, Argentina cannot afford to cooperate with Russia without being banned from each trade with the west, from which it is completely dependent.

I would like to see them boosting their economy and trade with BRICS nations and then get back into BRICS because BRICS is only going to get bigger and with more trade partners it can only be good for the Argentine economy.

Maybe if Argentina decided to replace completely trade from the west to trade from China and Russia until the west drop the sanctions...

That is the problem for the west.... BRICS offers all the technology that the west can provide, but also trade with far fewer barriers... as BRICS expands getting cut off from western trade might actually be a good thing because importers get used to trade links and trade conditions and when the west severs those links from their end then your importers and exporters have to explore alternatives, often with rather better terms than they were getting.

Possibly once Russia will be completely independent from western Import it will be able also to propose an alternative to all nations that fear the American sanctions.

I believe the purpose of BRICS is to create a pool of developing and growing economies that can work together to fill any gaps that western sanctions might create so they become western sanction proof. So it is not Russia replicating all of the technology and material of all the west, but BRICS as a group getting together and working together and trading together to replace the west as a block.

The state does not need to own and run every business including the corner grocery store, but some sectors
are best managed by the state.

Healthcare is something everyone needs, and when it is run by the state it wont be quite as efficient as if run by private enterprise, but a state run health service is interested in people being healthy and able to work, while a privately run health service is interested in income... treatments rather than cures...

With respect to "accustoming" to Western weaponry, we must remember that the post-"Malvinas War" experience demonstrates that the West is not trustworthy, as it is an ally of the United Kingdom. In fact, they are part of NATO.
That is why the dependency is more serious.
To take a current example: It would be as if there were Palestinians who proposed cooperating with Western Europe and the USA, without seeing that they are the ones that finance Israel.

On the other hand, I must make a clarification.
Malvinas is the name the islands have (for Argentines and most of the world). The name "Falklands" is not the translation of Malvinas, but the colonial name given to it by the occupier. Going back to the previous example, it would be: Palestine / Israel.
For us to read "Falklands" is insulting, or for that matter, as supporters of the United Kingdom.

State healthcare could be run much better than it is in Kanada. Roger Moore did a documentary on this subject called Sicko. France has its act together to
much greater degree than Kanada and I believe the UK. But the problem is that it is corrupted as another feeding trough for corporations. Big Pharma
sodomizes taxpayers with extortion level drug prices. They just recycle the same shit to avoid expiration of patents. A huge fraction of the cost of the
system is to service Big Pharma. If people would be informed on proper food intake, nearly all of these pharma products would be unneeded. The elderly
are herded into "polypharmacy" where they take a chain of drugs which serve to treat symptoms of the previous drug in the chain and not the actual disease.
This is not an exaggeration, look it up.

I cannot praise the Kanadian system. Waiting times for basic procedures (MRI, etc.) are absurdly long and getting longer. This must be corruption since
there is no way MRI machines and their operators are even a blip in the total cost of the system (*). This looks to me like an attempt to create discontent to
eventually privatize the system. The US is "efficient" because it does not have such nonsense waiting times, but then the US spends way more per capita
on health care than Kanada. The US system is a profit racket. Beware of visiting the USA without health insurance. You can easily blow over $100,000
with even a simple stay at the hospital (i.e. no major surgery).

(*) We also have cases where money given by the federal government for equipment (MRI, etc.) is diverted by hospital administrations into salaries. This is
banana republic level of mismanagement. These salaries are not increasing the service level to the public.