Following the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982, the British Government dispatched a naval task force to the South Atlantic, including two aircraft carriers, each carrying a Sea Harrier squadron. 801 Squadron was embarked on HMS "Invincible" and 800 Squadron (now with Blue Fox) on the flagship, HMS "Hermes". The leadership of 800 Squadron had experienced difficulties with the Blue Fox radar and took the view that it was useless, discounting Ward's claims that the equipment performed better than Ferranti had predicted. A Ferranti engineer joined the task force at Ascension Islands, primarily to fix a problem with seawater ingress into the radome, but was also able to retune 800 Squadron's radars. However, by that time, confidence in the equipment had been lost and there remained considerable differences in the way it was utilised between the two squadrons throughout the conflict. In the course of the war, four Argentinian aircraft were destroyed in air-to-air combat using Blue Fox. As was expected, the radar was unable to "look down" over land or rough sea and the other interceptions relied on a combination of ships' radars and visual acquisition. However, in moderate sea states, the Blue Fox was found to be useful in the surface search mode, being able to detect a warship at a range of . On 2 May, a single Sea Harrier was able to detect the Argentinian carrier group as it approached the British task force.