"Going strong" is an illusion. They're heavily propped up by government (state and federal) financial assistance. It's a vote-buying exercise. Realistically, the Australian car making industry is no longer economically viable in a self-sufficient way.

I suspect there were 4 major factors which led to the US-Australian alliance in 2300. 1) A logical extension of the alliance as it exists in RL now and in the time of the Twilight War; 2) Australia is likely to have become a vital stepping stone in the US Navy's links between the CONUS and the Middle East in the years at the end of and immediately after the Twilight War; 3) Australia has vast natural resources that are relatively easy to get to and far less tapped-out than America's so Australia is likely to have been a major trading partner of the US post-Twilight War (and something of a breadbasket too); and 4) I strongly suspect that Australia was one of those nations lucky enough to have found significant tantalum reserves in its territory, but needed the technological expertise of the US to fully realise tantalum's potential to make those nations with access to it into space-going powers.

They are members of an alliance containing the US. That's more than enough justification. If Australian forces have in any way opposed, much less hampered, Soviet forces or interests or the forces or interests of nations friendly to the Soviet Union, the justification becomes iron-clad. The Soviets are not fair-minded. To whatever degree the US might care about fair play, the Soviet Union cares even less.

From the start, the logic of the nuclear exchange has been to gain advantage without initiating a general strategic US-USSR exchange. Each nuke used in the US-USSR strategic exchange had a place in this logic. Washington D.C. gets hit because it is the US seat of power. New York, the nation’s most populous city, does not. Moscow gets hit because it is the seat of Soviet power. The rest of the targets are very important military targets, like SAC HQ, or refineries. The strikes on Los Angeles wipe out the city as a matter of collateral damage, not deliberate policy. The Soviets calculate that knocking out the electricity and petroleum refining will ruin the American war economy without inviting retaliatory strikes against Soviet population centers as a whole.

The allies, on the other hand, are a different story. If the US is playing a game of even exchange, which is about the only way to prevent MAD from becoming a reality, then nuclear attacks on US allies shouldn’t bring about attacks on the USSR. As I tried to point out already, Soviet attacks on Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand should not result in American attacks on Soviet targets, provided the Americans read the signs correctly. If one looks at the Canada hit list, Canada gets hit a lot harder than the US on a per capita basis. Clearly, the Soviets weren’t that worried about retaliation for beating the crap out of Canada.

Australia has raw materials, energy resources, industry, and a well-educated population. In the post-Exchange world, an intact Australia poses a threat to Soviet interests. The Soviets know perfectly well that it may take a century to repair all of the damage from the Exchange. If any Western nation, or for that matter any nation not under the thumb of the Soviets, is left with the kinds of assets possessed by Australia or France in 1997, that nation gets a massive advantage in the reshuffling of global power that will occur in the early 21st Century. The Soviets are not the kind of people to permit this. The US got off comparatively lightly because the US had the means to annihilate the Soviet Union if the Soviets got carried away. Australia lacks even the deterrent that France possesses. With all sympathy to my Australian compatriots, I think GDW’s portrayal of Australia as being hard hit shows Soviet thinking accurately.

I think every countries car industry is or has been propped up by their government to a varying extent for the reasons you mentioned, usualy because their whoefully innefficient. The French, Germans, Italians and the Japanese have all practised protectionism, subtle or not so subtle. Even truely free-market economies like America and Britain have dabbled in the affairs of their car makers.

The Australian OOB RN7 reposted above is complete rubbish for the reasons others have posted. The "Tasmanian Brigade" as just one example is near impossible! IRL, Tasmania has on paper an infantry Battalion plus a handful of small support units (one artillery battery of just a few 81mm mortars, medical unit, admin and transport (a few trucks). Total manpower right now is about 2-300, with most of them in the infantry "Battalion" (which only has one company with a platoon in Devonport, Launceston and Hobart, the state capital).

The population of the entire state can't support much more than that for long (about 400,000 people) and after the three population centres listed above, the next largest town only has 19,000.

So, a sustainable force of 3,500 in addition to the Tasmanians the writer assigned to his 1st Aus Division? Not a chance!

Also, the 3rd Airborne "Brigade" is nothing more than a Battalion. Last year (2011) it changed from an airborne (Parachute) battalion to only having a "smaller high-readiness Airborne Combat Team". http://www.3rar.com/3rarhistory.html

I believe the original writer may have been confused about what a "Regiment" is in Australia. Basically, regiment is an infantry term. RAR is Royal Australian Regiment, RNSWR is Royal New South Wales Regiment, RQR is Royal Queensland Regiment and so forth. RAR is regular army, the rest are reserve and organised on state lines. The Tasmanians mentioned above IRL are 12/40 Battalion RTR and a part of 9th Brigade, with in turn is a component of 2nd Division.

I think Australian in T2K could support an army of no more than four divisions and maybe a few independent units. This would include all the reserves and two of those divisions are going to be light infantry divisions at best.

However in WW2 Australia did actually put together a large army. On paper the Australian Army was very large; two armoured divisons (1, 3) twelve infantry divisions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) of which two were motorised at one time, and two independent armoured brigades. One million Australians served in the armed forces including 727,000 in the army, and 397,000 served overseas. However both of the armoured divsions and five of the infantry divisions never left Australia and were reserve & training units, three of the active infantry divisions (3, 5, 11) were formed from militia and the 8th Infantry Division surrendered to the Japanese in Malaya in 1942 and was never reformed.

Have seen the comments about Australia getting heavily nuked and on this one I will say I totally agree with Legbreaker - I dont see it happening - for one I doubt Australia may have even been involved in the war in 1997 and 1998 except possibly with Indonesia in a local war

Face it - Greece, Italy, France and Belguim did not fight on the NATO side - the chance of a non-NATO country not getting involved in the war is rather high given that fact

Now could the Soviets have hit their oil production capabilities - ok thats a possibility - but even then if Mombasa isnt a big hole in the ground (i.e. its obvious from Frank Frey that the refinery is still there) then it means that they didnt hit every refinery in every neutral country

And also Australia is very remote - hitting Mexico and Saudi heck yes - you dont hit the US and leave Mexican facilities alone and intact

As for Canada - its a NATO nation that sent troops to fight the Russians - you do that, you can get nuked

But I highly doubt, outside of volunteers that on their own went to the UK to join up with the fighting, that any Australian unit in the early part of the war when the nukes were still flying ever deployed to Europe

However Kenya, Korea, Vietnam, possibly the RDF - yes there I could see it happening but even then until Indonesia and New Guinea is settled not much beyond possibly a company or two here and there or possibly Special Forces types

Oh and volunteer units could have been large - I could see the country officially being neutral and several thousand Aussies heading out to join up - or they could have been a token force of a few hundred

People are going to have to believe what fits their preferred narrative when it comes to nuclear actions against Australia. It makes me smile, though, to read fussing about where a few ships in the Persian Gulf might have gone during the 1997-2000 period, then read that Soviets essentially have gone all fluffy bunny and decided that Australia will be spared nuclear attention because they really weren’t that involved in the war. It’s like after two years of conventional war, Western treachery, the deaths of millions of Soviet troops and citizens, the crippling of Soviet industry, and the loss of the paradigm of the USSR as a global power they’ve found a way to bring out their inner sunshine instead of using a small portion of their massive nuclear arsenal to establish a more tolerable post-war global balance of power at little cost to themselves. It’s nice.

“First, military targets were hit. Then industrial targets clearly vital to the war effort. Then economic targets of military importance. Then transportation and communications, oil fields and refineries. Then major industrial and oil centers in neutral nations, to prevent their possible use by the other side (emphasis added)(p. 26, Referee’s Manual).”

Australians today, and even 20 years ago are a totally different animal to those of the 1930's and 40's - Vietnam saw to that.
It's hard for reserve units to maintain even 25% strength in peacetime with tax free pay, and all the other benefits, start throwing the possibility of being killed into the mix and voluntary recruitment will drop. Conscription may fill out the numbers, but it will also put any government who tries it out of power for decades in about 5 seconds flat, and they know it.

Right now we have a paper strength of two woefully understrength divisions. In T2K where we don't have a clear enemy of our own (until Indonesia) and only a small UN presence to worry about (Korea perhaps and Cyprus), there'll be no obvious need to increase recruitment soon enough to make a serious difference.

In WWII, we still had ironclad links to the UK and many people still felt somewhat British at heart, or at least their parents and grandparents certainly did. It was our DUTY as Commonwealth citizens to join up and go fight the Nazi's who were putting the motherland at threat. Then, when Singapore fell, virtually all Australian units were brought home as fast as transport could be found for them - only individuals and small units stayed behind.

Australia only raised such a large army at the time because we had no hope of help from elsewhere - the British were pinned down at home and bogged in Africa, the rest of the Commonwealth were assisting them, and the US were still neutral. Once the US came on board, our military started to be downsized as it had been completely unsustainable - there were serious shortages of food, equipment, and machines for the soldiers, and even less available for the civilians, even with the militia only being part time soldiers for the most part.

Now admittedly that was when we had a much smaller population than today, however even if Australia was subject to only a handful of nukes to take out the industrial capabilities (or part thereof) of the major cities, we'd suffer some pretty damn high casualties since roughly 80% of our population lives in those locations.

At best we may have three Divisions, but more likely the two current ones would be brought up to strength (in manpower, if not heavy equipment) and an "adequate" supply of reserves trained and probably used in civil defence duties until called up as replacements.

Is has always puzzled me how people think that WW2 led to a dramatic shift in Australia's relationship with Britain and closer links with America, when in fact the oppinion of the Australian military was as critical of America as it was of Britain in regards to its treatment and use of Australian soldiers. Sure after the war America was the new super power and Britain couldn't afford an empire anymore, and after 1970 there where no British forces left East of Cyprus other than the Gurkhas and a few garrison units in Hong Kong, so its obvious why Australia drew militarily closer to America.

But when war broke out in Europe it was logical to see why Britain used ANZAC troops as its own troops were tied up fighting the Germans and Italians, and it was very easy to to ship ANZAC reinforcements to North Africa and the Far East. The fact that Australian troops weren't immediately transferred back to Australia to defend the country when war broke out with Japan, and Singapore fell was due to poor political leadership in both Australia as well as Britain.

What is not logical is how America failed to fully utilise Australian troops in the Pacific from 1942. When MacArthur fled to Australia after the fall of the Philippines Australian troops accounted for nearly all the land forces under his command, as well as a substantial proportion of the air and naval forces present in the south Pacific. Although the US quickly started to build up its own forces in the area, Australian forces were only realy used for secondary roles such flanking US forces or mopping up operations once the US forces had been moved on to another assignment or battleground. This has always puzzled me as the Australian soldier had a very good reputation before WW2, with training levels as good as any British soldier and coming from a culture similar in many ways to the US soldier; largely white and superior in physical health and education to the majority of the brown or black troops from India and Africa that Britain used in Burma and the Middle East.

Looking back over the old comments in the thread, I’m struck by a few ideas.

1) The idea that nuclear strikes on targets in Australia might not be “worth it”.
2) The idea that Australia might sit entirely on the sidelines
3) The idea that there is some sort of spirit of fair play such that the light treatment given to CONUS results in an even lighter treatment of Australia
4) The idea that the absence of evidence of Aussie and Kiwi involvement in the fighting in Korea amounts to evidence of absence

In 1997, the Soviets have thousands of warheads and hundreds of delivery systems. France and the UK might have to worry about whether a given strike is “worth it”. The US and the USSR don’t have to worry about wasting nukes. Even if 75% of the delivery systems are destroyed prior to November 1997, they have more than enough to do all of the work discussed in the written materials and have hundreds left over. Their issue is whether they want to pay in form of absorbing retaliatory strikes.

Long before 1997, the Soviets have allocated more than enough resources to turn Australia into Mad Max land. By the 1980’s, they’ve already figured out how they are going to get enough warheads there to turn the urban centers into glass parking lots. Just as there are redundancies for ensuring every other target of interest is incinerated three times over, there are redundancies for getting warheads to Australia. The Soviets aren’t the sort of people to allow their strategic planning to be upended by the loss of a single boomer.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, Australia and New Zealand are partners in ANZUS. I know the US-New Zealand part of ANZUS is dysfunctional as of 1996. However, the New Zealand-Australia part is functioning just fine, as is the Australia-US portion. That amounts to guilty by association in the Soviet book.

I’ve said it many times, but it seems to bear repeating yet again. The US gets lighter treatment than a general exchange because the US is in a position to retaliate in kind. The USSR also gets lighter treatment than we’d expect from a general exchange for the very same reason. This has nothing to do with good-heartedness or fair play on the part of the Soviets. They’d love to go after York, PA. But they aren’t willing to have the US hit a major Soviet arms factory in return. That logic changes when it comes to the non-nuclear Western allies, since none of them can retaliate with nuclear weapons.

One of the arguments for distinguishing between Canada and Australia is that Canada actively participates in combat against the Pact. It would be great if a Korea sourcebook had been published such that the presence of Australian troops in Korea could be established. But let’s think it through. The DPRK invades the ROK in late 1996. The Left in Australia probably would argue that the North invades the South only in response to German and Anglo-American provocation in Europe. There would be some validity to this viewpoint. However, the fact remains that the ROK has been invaded by another country. Australia can fight to defend the ROK’s sovereignty without endorsing any of the actions undertaken by NATO in Europe or the West in the Persian Gulf. Moreover, there’s ANZUS. US forces are under attack in the ROK. Australia is signatory to a treaty that states that an attack on one signatory in the Pacific basin is an attack on the other signatories.

We don’t have much knowledge regarding events in Korea. The history of 2nd Infantry Division states “The division was first engaged against North Korean commando units on 12/19/96 and by 1/3/97 was actively engaged against mechanized elements of the North Korean Army. The division participated in holding actions along the 38th Parallel throughout the first half of 1997…(US Army Vehicle Guide, p. 5)” The other US formations in Eighth US Army arrived in Korea after the fighting started. This is a reasonable basis for concluding that the North Koreans initiated offensive action. Therefore, regardless of what Australia thinks of the war in Germany, the ROK is under attack by a foreign power not associated with events in Europe or the Middle East. A fellow ANZUS signatory is under attack by a foreign power not associated with events in Europe or the Middle East. Surely this constitutes a reasonable basis for the deployment of a ANZAC brigade, plus supporting sea and air assets. Thus while we have no categorical evidence one way or another, we have good reason to believe that Australia was involved in the fighting in Korea on the side of the Allies.

Ego, my friend. Pure ego. MacArthur was not about to have some Aussie upstart getting headlines. Therefore, the Australians were assigned the crappy job of clearing New Guinea while the Americans engaged in more newsworthy operations, once there were enough Americans available to conduct separate operations.

Australians in Korea
 

Legbreaker and I both referenced Challenge #30 earlier in this thread. Here's the quote in question.

So there we have it...definitive confirmation that not only were Australian soldiers in Korea but they were playing an active role in the fighting. Other than the 20th of July there's no specific dates given, although the paragraph in question follows one that refers to conscription beginning in May, so likliehood is that it's sometime in the early Summer of 1997 (at the latest), which I think is compatible with what Webstral has said. There's no mention of the size of the Australian force. Nor is there confirmation of New Zealand involvement, although I'd agree that's likely.

I'd like to clarify some points here.
At one point during WW2, there were so many volunteers coming forward that the Australian government actually stopped men from joining the military because the drain on the workforce was becoming too severe. Men involved in transport, agriculture and mining just to name a few, were often not allowed to leave their jobs to join the military to ensure that those industries could still produce enough material to support the war.

The militia soldiers mentioned were full time during the war as they constituted the bulk of land forces for the defence of Australia. The regular army was deployed overseas but under the legislation of the day, militia forces could not serve outside Australia - so they were used for the defence of the nation while the regular forces were deployed to other theatres.

The ground fighting in Papua New Guinea was done primarily by Australian militia forces and not the regular army. PNG was an Australian protectorate so the law allowed the militia forces to be sent there.

During the earlier stages of the war, Australia saw itself in dire need of aircraft and armoured vehicles. These were traditionally supplied by Great Britain but with GB herself needing them, orders for the Australia forces could not be supplied. We set about building our own aircraft and also a cruiser tank to alleviate this. After the US entry into the war and the gearing up of their factories to produce war materiel, they were able to supply much of the needed aircraft and armoured vehicles - it could be argued that this was likely the start of the "buy American" relationship between Australia and the US.

How could I have missed that? I'm hearing voices from my past at Benning School for Boys. "Attention to detail, Candidate..."

While I would considered it "barely canon" the mini adventure "Whats Polish for G'day" seems to put the Australians in the same category as the French.

They are both jokingly in the "Organization of non irritated nations" or something similar according to one of the SAS chaps.

Yes, that's something I've been trying to work on for a while now. My thoughts are a regular army Brigade was sent over initially and replaced by a reserve Brigade (the 9th) when things hotted up in Papua New Guinea with the Indonesians. The majority of sea and air assets assigned to Korea were withdrawn with the initial troops to deal with the problem closer to home and never returned (damaged/destroyed as mentioned in the books). 9 Brigade were used by the UN/US commanders in Korea to secure rear areas and as of 2000 are looking for some way of getting home.

It depended on where they were. Members of some units still participated in their prewar occupations, or the entire unit was used in traditionally non-military tasks.
Edit: Militia were indeed employed on a similar basis as the AIF troops, I was thinking of the VDC - Volunteer Defence Corps.

Initially yes. The first unit in contact with the Japanese advance over the Owen Stanley Ranges was the Militia 39th Battalion, a unit which up until a few weeks before had received little to no military training (previously used as labourers in and around Port Moresby) and were (under) equipped. Most were armed with SMLEs but there was only a handful of Brens and even less Thompson SMGs. They conducted an almost textbook fighting withdrawal over the mountains in what can only be described as some of the worst terrain possible in the face of approximately 10,000 of Japans finest.

The 53rd Battalion of the militia were sent in to support them but as a unit performed dismally - they'd received even less training than the 39th and were just as poorly equipped, if not worse.

Eventually the 21st Brigade AIF (regular soldiers) arrived having been fighting in Syria just a few months before. But even the injection of fresh, veteran troops didn't stop the Australians being pushed back. In fact, the Japanese managed to move so far south that they could see Port Moresby below them before they were pushed back.

Out of curiosity, when did the fighting start between Australia and Indonesia? Did it kick off in PNG?

Everything seems to indicate it only happened in PNG. When is open for debate, but it would seem logical for Indonesia to wait until Australia was involved heavily in Korea and none of our allies could help due to entanglements in Europe and elsewhere.
So, shall we say no sooner than mid 1997?

Whenever it was, it would appear to have been rather short and sharp, at least as far as naval and air operations go anyway. The ground conflict could be one that grinds on for years, or barely happens at all.

I'm of the opinion a force of around Brigade strength were sent in to reinforce the local PNG military, there's a Brigade or so in Korea and the rest are back home either carrying out disaster relief missions, assisting the police, securing vital facilities or training for deployment to PNG (not much of the latter). Most of the major population centres are nuked to some degree or another with Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth almost certainly receiving at least a warhead each (probably 3-4 for Sydney) and Townsville, Cairns and Darwin being possible secondary targets. Pine Gap may have suffered a small warhead. Canberra, the national capital, seems an unlikely target as there's not much in the way of military, industrial or other targets of worth - just a lot of politicians which are easily replaced.

Even with only those primary targets I've listed being hit with small yield warheads, the effects are going to be huge. Roughly 30-40% of the countries population are going to be killed either in the initial strikes or the aftermath. Medical facilities will be completely overwhelmed, especially as most of the specialists and advanced facilities are located in the strike zones. Survivors aren't going to be hanging around for radiation, starvation, etc to kill them, so there's going to be a few million people heading into the countryside looking for food and shelter. By the time things settle down a bit, about 50%, or ten million people will be dead.

Meanwhile, there's upwards of 5,000 troops deployed in Korea, and about the same in PNG. Reserves will be called up (probably the moment Indonesia invades PNG) but are unlikely to have completed training by late 1997. They, and every other available unit, will be rushed into action trying to control the refugees and provide for their basic needs - they'll make only a small difference and be completely overwhelmed. What's left of the government will be desperately trying to get the troops home from Korea, but with the destruction the RAN suffers fighting the Indonesians, there'll be few or even no ships available for escort duties. The destruction wreaked on the oil processing facilities will also rule out using civilian shipping as troop carriers as what small amounts are available will be desperately needed by the troops still at home.

Some additional recruitment will occur post nuke, but most of these troops will be rushed through training and are likely to be used in humanitarian tasks rather than military. As previously posted, small arms will be available (in quantity given the stockpiles we've got tucked away here and there), but heavy weapons and military vehicles will be scarce. Most of these units will have to either walk, or use requisitioned civilian transport.

With the lack of fuel, many of the old steam engines will be pulled from their museums and used for longer distance transport of troops and supplies, however the mere rumour of a train carrying food is likely to result in ambushes, derailments and the loss of these valuable resources. While Australia does have a fairly extensive rail network, outside the major cities they're usually single lines and in poor shape due to insufficient maintenance (even today). Sabotaging them in the hope of capturing a container or two of flour isn't going to be all that difficult and once the line is cut, re-routing will require going hundreds of miles out of the way.

South east Queensland is likely to be the best place to be after around 2000 due to the availability of sugar cane for fuel and the ability to grow crops year round. Sugar mills are scattered about the countryside and breweries and distilleries are relatively common.

Thanks Leg, that looks like a pretty decent summary to me - I would certainly buy into it.

Just one question...if we settle on a mid 97 start date for the Australian / Indonesian conflict and Reserves aren't called up until that time, wouldn't that make it more difficult to replace a Regular Brigade in Korea with a Reserve one given the time that would be required to bring the Reserves up to speed and deploy them to Korea? Might there not be a call up of the Reserves at the end of 1996 as a purely precautionary measure (and possibly limited in scope)? or could you end up with one Regular Brigade in Korea and another Regular Brigade in PNG?

this huge nuking of australia still makes no sense and definitely seems to be added on a long time after the rest of the canon was in place - as in "oh crap we forget about the Aussies" kind of thing

My response..(LONG)
 

In terms of any Australian target list/ORBAT. I would say I would be more than willing to defer to Leg and Targan on that one. It's your country guys, and honestly, you know it better than anyone.

I would say considering the nature of the exchange, the Soviets wouldn't have much incentive to hit a lot of targets in Australia/New Zealand.

Let's go down the list of potential reasons and target base in Australia.

Nuclear weapons? None that I know of, unless you guys have something to tell us. Now there might be some SAC recovery bases but that's a bit of a stretch....though Chico might know something there. Also, a US or British SSBN might put into an Aussie port? Again, those are time sensitive targets, so methinks those would be dealt with by a Soviet SSN with SS-N-21 SLCM.

C3 targets? I am sure Australia has a few, but how hardened are they and are they joint commands with PACCOM? Or are they national, and if so, are they supporting Australian forces cooperating with the Allies? If so, they're going to be hit, if not, then why waste the warhead?

Oil refining? I could see that on the principle of resource denial, but how big are they and how much do they produce? Chico and I worked on a revised target list for a project we will release later. Suffice to say, we decided to hit Oil Refineries of 100,000bpd production or greater. It conformed CLOSELY to the canon list, but there were some differences, heck, if anything, I think MORE targets wound up on the list.

Here's the list for Australia and New Zealand from Wiki

Now, what I did? Took google earth, got a lat long, then found a decent blast mapper and actually did a targeting plot. Chico then revised some of my targeting (I kinda went HULK SMASH, such as the infamous example of hitting oil refineries with 400-500kt each, when they were across the street from each other...)

That's about it..I am sure you guys can come up with other ideas...but I thought putting that out there might help.

if you need two 500 kt warheads for refineries that close you have some pretty crappy warheads

Perhaps terrain is a factor. Or perhaps the CEP is so great that two strikes are warranted.

Agreed. We can only expect so much from a small group of guys creating a game against publishing timelines before the advent of the Internet. Our Bible has limitations.

Legbreaker pointed out that something like 80% of Australia’s population is urban. A couple of nukes directed at important targets in those urban areas will hurt Australia more than a couple of nukes directed against a nation with a less urban population.

I’ve included a couple of attachments regarding how Canada fared in the Twilight: 2000. We’ve now established that both Canada and Australia fought against the Soviet Union. They are both non-nuclear middle powers allied with the US. Cut the megatonnage directed against Australia in half (compared to Canada)just for the sake of being nice to Australia, and you’ll still get a pretty serious body blow to the Land Down Under. Again, I don’t say this because I like the idea of my Australian cousins being incinerated or dying of radiation poisoning. I say this so that we don’t create separate standards for important players in WW3.

All of this said, we all have to go with what we like most. I believe I told Mo that all he had to tell me was that he didn’t want to have a nuked Australia in his campaign and I’d close my mouth on the matter. However, if one wants to present a rationale for Australia being un-nuked, then that rationale a) must defend itself and b) is available for challenge. There’s no reason for it to be personal.

There's bound to be some indications of Indonesia's intentions beforehand, so we should be able to justify pushing the reserve call up back about 6 months. Perhaps the official explanation, at least the one given to Indonesia anyway, was that it was a response to Australia's UN obligations in Korea, or to help out in Cyprus letting the British got to war in Europe. A bit thin, but aren't most political statements?

The timeline is important here too. 3rd Brigade probably goes over to Korea first and the reserves are called up at the same time to begin training. Recruiting efforts kick into overdrive and maybe conscription sugar coated as a way of reducing unemployment, kick starting the economy or something like that.

Officially the reserves are only supposed to serve inside Australia as a defence only force, somewhat like the WWII militia were supposed to, however once Indonesia makes it's move, 1st (less 1 Armoured Regiment aka Koalas - protected species not allowed outside Australia ;)) and 7th Brigades are sent into action, 9th Brigade is sent to relieve 3rd in Korea who are brought back home for predeployment training and reaclimatisation for PNG and to give commanders an airborne option (3 Para battalion).

8th, 11th and 13th Brigades are deployed to the north of the country while 4th and 5th Brigades (plus the Koalas) are kept as "strategic reserve" but sent into disaster relief duties when the nukes hit.

3rd Brigade may not make it to PNG but could be redirected as a "fire brigade" at home.

The list of refineries from Wiki is a very decent starting point and only needs fairly minimal expansion to completely screw Australia. Another half dozen warheads aimed at shipyards and the like and it's all over. Hitting those targets will also still take out a huge percentage of the population, even if that wasn't the intended aim.

That restriction on the Reserves only serving within Australia was watered down years ago. East Timor, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands are just a few of the places I can think of off the top of my head that Reserves have been sent to in recent decades. Heck, official ADF recruitment advertisements on TV have for many years suggested that overseas service is a potential benefit of joining the Reserves.


Very true. Over here in my corner of this Wide Brown Land the Kwinana Refinery sits right on the coast, in a strip of industrial zoned land south of the main metropolitan area. Perth and it's satellite cities and suburbs occupy a long, narrow strip of very flat sand plain, bordered to the east by a continuous low escarpment rising up where the old shoreline used to be in ancient times. The prevailing winds along this section of the West Australian coast tend to be consistently from the south-west. A single nuclear warhead detonated over the Kwinana Refinery would demolish a very significant proportion of this region's heavy industry, shipbuilding and fuel refining capabilities. Conveniently that same warhead would also severely damage or destroy the nearby HMAS Stirling, the largest naval base in this part of the world and the home port for half of Australia's submarine fleet. Then, just as a nice little additional kick in the teeth, the radioactive plume would be carried by the consistent prevailing winds right across a significant part of Perth's southern suburbs and urban-rural interface (market gardens, dairy farms, quasi-rural redneck spawning grounds etc.).

And in the event of a summer nuking, the nuke plume would also tend to get trapped in the lower atmosphere by the almost-constant temperature inversion layer held in place over Perth by the eastern escarpment. Look, in a way a modest nuking would probably do Australians some good. As it is now we're so used to surviving on a continent that seems hell-bent on trying to kill us with its horrible climates, vast deserts, limited fresh water, inedible/angry/poisonous/morphologically confusing flora and fauna and soul-crushing isolation that we've developed cultural assumptions of near-indestructibility. Radioactive fallout would finally give us an environmental factor that we couldn't just avoid, ignore, blow up or shoot.

Absolutely (see my treatment of the reserve 9th Brigade being sent to Korea). My thoughts about leaving the rest at home are that about 75% of their numbers would be new recruits and possibly conscripts (if not in name, in practise). Ensuring only volunteers went overseas may go some way towards placating the anti-conscription groups.

I would make an argument that some of the targets in Australia may have been missed as well. If you look at the attacks in the US there were clearly misses and malfunctions in the attacks there.

Given the distances involved (any shot against Australia from either of the sub bastions the Soviets had in real life near the Soviet coast or from their ICBM silos), the fact that they are are targeting areas not normally targeted (I have real doubts any Australian facility was ever targeted for real during the Cold War with the exception of one or two major cities), and the performance of the missiles as seen in the timeline I would see some of their naval and oil production facilities surviving - with these being the basis for the areas of control that the Army builds on.

I.e. they go for Sydney but the shot misses and lands off in the ocean instead of the city center or the missile hits dead center in a naval ship yard and fails to detonate but still causes a lot of damage just from radioactive debris that has to be cleaned up.

Canada is a much different case as the attack on the US had to pass right overhead - so obviously that country has a much higher possibility of successful missile impacts. Its a much easier shooting solution than Australia and also one that they can get better data about if they did miss - i.e. a recon plane can pretty quickly tell them they missed and fire again where Australia, if their satellite network is down, could take quite some time before they know they missed the target.

Why would they not be targeted during the cold war? It's not like they had a shortage of warheads. My guess is the US probably targeted us as well, just for the practise and just in case a decade down the track we switched sides for some reason - not like the US were short of missiles either, and targeting doesn't automatically mean launching.

Even a near miss though would inflict terrifying casualties on the population. Australian cities aren't as condensed as those elsewhere in the world. You can drive along a highway for an hour in some cases and still be in the same city. Given the range the Soviets would have to deal with, it's likely they'd have used ICBMs too with their correspondingly larger potential payload and therefore theoretically larger blast radius.

Outside of Europe and North America, Australia is one of the most developed countries on the planet (technologically and economically). It simply makes no sense for the Soviets not to attack.

As for recon of the damage, isn't that what satellites are for? No need to fly a plane all this way just to take a few photos.

They'd learn plenty from terrestrial sigint. The Australian media would be screaming its lungs out on every functioning bandwidth in the aftermath of a nuclear strike. And in the cases of isolated but highly developed places such as Perth, the sudden total lack of available sources of sigint would tell the Soviets plenty. A single low altitude airburst over the industrial parks south of Perth would clear the local communication EM bands instantly and utterly, and the EMP would fry electronics and most electrics over a wide area. No more ULF from the submarine HQ, no more commercial and military ship-to-shore transmissions, no more emergency services dedicated bands, or TV or AM/FM radio broadcasts. Just long lines of shell shocked survivors streaming north and east on foot or in the few drivable vehicles in search of accessible water supplies, because the pumping stations would be dead, the Swan River is estuarine and the ground water is undrinkable.

Darn, how depressing. Why the hell do I live here? :D

Why do you think I moved to Tasmania where the air is the cleanest in the world and there's no nuke targets? :p

And not just during the Cold War, either.

In fact, that subject came up recently. As a card-carrying member of the NRA and a former MI squint, I’m invited periodically to provide feedback on our nuclear target list. (That NRA lobby really knows how to influence people and policy!) There is now a target identifier with the label “Legbreaker’s house”. When asked why I wanted to invest a 20Mt warhead on a ground burst in the Australian boonies, I replied,

“If we’re making any plans at all to hit Australia, this guy has to go. He’s not the sort we want to leave alive. I say we nuke the site into orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

Web, you weren't supposed to tell him that! Aw darn it, now the birthday surprise is all gone. Hell, we even taught the nuke to knock and say "Avon calling". :D

"Candygram!"

Pine Gap
 

Ever heard of Pine Gap? I'd be shocked if it wasn't on the Soviet target list.

As would I James. Nurrungar probably not, it's an early warning facility associated with the DSP, which is not something the Soviets wanna screw with considering the nature of the T2K exchange.

sorry couldn't resist, and no, I am not saying Leg is Mongo or Webstral is Sheriff Bart...

Yeah and that's just one of the places that were on the target list.

There was also the Harold Holt US Navy submarine communications base near Exmouth in Western Australia that provided naval communications as far afield as the eastern part of the Indian Ocean and the western part of the Pacific Ocean.

There was also the Australian Army communications base in Melbourne that provided direct comms from Australia to Canada, the UK and the USA. One of it's secondary functions was to provide alternate comms for any of those three northern hemisphere nations to any of the other ones should their normal comms go down.

There were some others that aren't common knowledge but in general, there were at least five potential targets for Soviet nukes and two of them were in major Australian cities.

Edit:
A quote from Current Affairs Bulletin, Vol. 59, No. 7, December 1982, pp. 14-26 by Brian Martin titled "The global health effects of nuclear war"
In the main, the section quoted below was lifted from the following source:-

Desmond Ball, 'Target Australia? No 1: Pinpointing the US Installations', Pacific Defence Reporter, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 1981, pp.25-33; D. W. Posener, 'Target Australia? No 3: Planning for Radiological Defence', ibid., pp.42-52; Desmond Ball, 'Limiting Damage from Nuclear Attack', in Desmond Ball and J. O. Langtry (editors), Civil Defence and Australia's Security, Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.

"The prime targets in Australia are the United States military bases at Pine Gap, Nurrungar and North West Cape. Attacks on these bases would kill perhaps a few thousand people. There is a smaller chance of attacks on Cockburn Sound and on Darwin RAAF base, which are hosts for United States strategic nuclear ships, submarines and aircraft. Nuclear bombing of these two facilities, which are close to the population centres of Perth and Darwin respectively, could kill up to one hundred thousand people, depending on the wind direction at the time. Perhaps least likely, but certainly most devastating, would be nuclear attacks on major population centres. For example, the ports of major Australian cities could well be bombed if United States warships carrying strategic nuclear weapons were in harbour. Major population centres might also be hit as a consequence of attacks on associated military or economic facilities. Such attacks could kill from a few hundred thousand to several million people."

Weren't all these potential targets in Australia covered in my list?

Perhaps independent confirmation was needed for some. Your list was quite good, RN7.