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Old 10-08-2009, 09:58 PM
RN7 RN7 is offline
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Quote:
First to address RN7's post, with the Merc: 2000 situation.
Australia and the UK would be operating Milan as their ATGW and not a US system. I am fairly certain that the Javelin ATGW was not obtained by either nation until the early 2000s.
Well I was talking about current Australian small arms not Cold War equipment, so both Australia and Britain would be using the Franco-German Milan system.

Quote:
As for the Abrams and Bradleys, I think it was just a lucky guess that GDW picked the Abrams as MBTs for Australia, certainly the decision wasn't really made to buy them until long after the game books were published. The thinking of the time was that we were probably going to buy the Leopard 2 or perhaps the Challenger to replace the Leopard 1. The Abrams was not a good choice for the Australian Army but it was a very good for the Australian government.
What the Aussie Army wanted and what the Aussie government wanted where and probably still are entirely different things. The Challenger 1 or 2 was probably overlooked despite a tradition of British tanks in Australian service dating to well before WW2. I sence a cynical bias against all things British in Australian government circles and maybe some military circles as well, and it also occurs in Ireland were I'm from, despite the fact that British equipment may sometimes be the best suited for its needs. The Leopard 2 would be a logical choice to replace the Leopard 1, so the Abrams was a bit of a suprise.
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