The official confirmation by Defense Minister Carlos Presti and Naval Aviation Commander Rear Admiral Román Enrique Olivero regarding the definitive retirement of the Super Étendard (SUE) and Super Étendard Modernisé (SEM) fighter-bombers marks the end of one of the most glorious chapters in Argentine air and maritime defense. However, this decommissioning is not merely a technical step in the so-called "Plan Dédalo": it is the culmination of years of political ineptitude, unproductive debt, and submission to the British military embargo.

The history of this fleet summarizes in a single image the dismantling of sovereign capabilities: the five original aircraft that in 1982 sank the British destroyer HMS Sheffield and the logistics cargo ship Atlantic Conveyor with Exocet missiles ended up dismantled along with the five Modernisé aircraft purchased by Mauricio Macri in 2018 from France for more than 14 million dollars , aircraft that never flew a single minute in Argentine skies.

The G-20 fiasco: Millions wasted on planes that never took off

In 2017 and 2018, the Cambiemos administration justified the purchase of five Super Étendards (SEMs) from the French Navy under the urgent argument of needing to secure the airspace during the G-20 Summit in Buenos Aires. The operation was not only a chronological failure—the aircraft arrived in the country in May 2019, months after the summit had ended—but also a capitulation foretold by the technical reports themselves.

No subsequent government explored with technical determination the development of alternative cartridges with local industry (through CITEDEF or Fabricaciones Militares) or suppliers outside the NATO sphere. Inaction was chosen until the system was declared obsolete.

The sequence of helplessness

The retirement of the Super Étendard does not happen in a vacuum; it is linked to another series of decisions:

1.    Closure of historical bases: The Punta Indio Naval Air Base (BAPI) is being operationally dismantled, degrading it to a simple airport "station", transferring its schools and B200 SAR aircraft to Bahía Blanca and leaving the mouth of the Río de la Plata and the Hidrovía unprotected.

2.    Loss of the naval attack vector: By withdrawing the SUE/SEM without fixed-wing combat replacement for the Navy, Argentina is abandoning the doctrine of anti-ship attack and fighter-bomber over the sea.

3.    Conditional borrowing: While the planes that sank the British fleet are being grounded, the Government commits $400 million to buy AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles from the American company Raytheon for the F-16s; the same contractor and missile that the United Kingdom uses at the fortress of Mount Pleasant.

4.    Suffocation and dissolution: With an operational cut of more than $59 billion and military salaries reduced by 80% (with military personnel authorized to drive Uber to avoid falling into destitution), Federico Sturzenegger is pushing for the dissolution of the Navy to merge it as a coastal police force under the Naval Prefecture.

By scrapping the fighter jets that made colonial arrogance pay dearly in 1982, the Argentine State cancels the last symbol of its own naval deterrence in the South Atlantic, paving the way for a foreign military protectorate and the consolidation of NATO's presence in the Malvina Islands.