Australia Twilight War & After...

[Olefin]

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

[Jason Weiser]

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

Australia
New South Wales
Kurnell Refinery, (Caltex), 124,500 bbl/d (19,790 m3/d),[17] Botany Bay
Clyde Refinery, (Royal Dutch Shell), 100,000 bbl/d (16,000 m3/d), Clyde
Victoria
Geelong Refinery, (Royal Dutch Shell), 130,000 bbl/d (21,000 m3/d), Geelong
Altona Refinery, (ExxonMobil), about 75,000 bbl/d (11,900 m3/d), Altona North (refinery reduced from 2 trains to 1 train between 2000–2004)
Queensland
Bulwer Island Refinery, (BP), 90,000 bbl/d (14,000 m3/d), Bulwer Island
Lytton Refinery, (Caltex), 104,000 bbl/d (16,500 m3/d), Lytton
South Australia
Port Stanvac Refinery, (ExxonMobil), 100,000 bbl/d (16,000 m3/d), Lonsdale (mothballed since 2003 - 239 ha site to be cleaned up and redeveloped for housing)
Western Australia
Kwinana Refinery, (BP), 138,000 bbl/d (21,900 m3/d), Kwinana
New Zealand
Marsden Point Oil Refinery (NZRC), 96,000 bbl/d (15,300 m3/d)

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.

[Olefin]

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

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Olefin

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.

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Olefin

… 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

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.

Originally Posted by Olefin

this huge nuking of australia still makes no sense

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.

[Legbreaker]

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.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

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).

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.

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

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.

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.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Targan

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.

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.

[Olefin]

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.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Olefin

...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)

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.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

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?

[James1978]

Originally Posted by Olefin

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.

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

[Jason Weiser]

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.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by James1978

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

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."