Potential Australian/New Zealand/East Timor/Indonesia conflict (was Red Dawn Remake

[headquarters]

Targan , you will be the grey haired gentleman with a brodie helmet and gasmask bag on your chest running around shouting all those insolent teenagers to attention in your towns home defense force.You might not be able to endure all the physical hardship that the younger ones can -but fighting a war isnt about running old chap .It is about holding your position and making the enemy run.

having the will to fight is pre requisite no 1 in a situation where national sovereignity is at stake in a sudden crisis or invasion.

The fellows who sank the Blucher the 9th of April 1940 ( one of the worlds most advanced and powerful warships at the time ) were reservists and the commander was in his 60s if I recall correctly .The guns were from the last half of the 1800s..The Kriegsmarine was cheeky and sent an esqadrille up the Oslofjord to capture our goverment,king and capitol in one fouls swoop in the guise of darkness,but they had to pass a narrow strait guarded by antique guns and a crew of reservist with a 3 week conscription in the 1920s behind them before they were recalled for this duty(!).The leaders were retired officers of ripe age.

The professional soldiers and young men in charge of the defense of our nation were biting their nails in fear and confusion, fleeing,surrendering,running around screaming incoherently ,and politicians were milling about with no clear orders - the decision to fight the approaching ships -and thus entering world war two was made by the unlikely heros of a band of reservists with little training and some old warhorses -some who had come out of retirement to take up posts at the Oscarsborg fortress in the Oslofjord -voluntarily.

It is a part of the story that the nationality of the ships approaching was unknown at the time the battery fired -for all they knew they might have been british!(We have fought them before you know).
But turns out -they were the boche and bobs your uncle -Norway became one of the allies.We were neutral at the time ,and the brits and the jerries both violated our neutrality .War with either seemed likely if it came to a situation with a push.
.

In a sudden invasion there will be panic and confusion -and as Legbreaker says -many professional military men will head for the hills because of the seemingly hopeless situation .Politicians and business men will back out in many cases -not willing to bear the responsibility for decisions that will lead to deaths.The fight is then left to reservists,volunteers and whoever else happens to be caught in the fighting .

Get a khaki kookabura slouch hat and some wide baggy shorts and go for it mate !

Originally Posted by Targan

Well I still get freaked out a little every time I think about Indonesia. People have told me time and again that the Indonesian military is qualitatively no match for Australia and New Zealand's armed forces but as an Australian I can't help but feel a bit threatened by Indonesia. Not so much as an immediate threat but a potential future threat. I mean there are what, around 21 million Australians. And our closest neighbour is the largest Muslim nation in the world with somewhere in the vicinity of 230 million people! All crowded on an archipelago in not particularly fantastic living conditions.

I don't think it takes a great leap of imagination to envisage a day where world conditions have deteriorated, rising sea levels eat away more and more of Indonesia's land mass, the military regain some of the power they have lost in the past 15 years and a more militant or (heaven forbid) radical Islamist government takes power. Right now Australia has powerful friends that would tend to scare off any conceivable military threat to Australia but that might not last forever. One of my big regrets is that if Australia and Indonesia ever enter into a serious stoush I'll be too old to do my part for my country in the manner my warrior spirit would want me to. I'll just have to find a sneakier way to have a go at the enemy.

I'm sure that most Indonesians are really nice people but take a look at what the Indonesian military and military-backed militias did in places like East Timor. That was only a few years ago and it was really, really nasty. The Indonesian military clearly has few qualms about engaging in activities that most western militaries would find abhorrent.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by headquarters

...and as Legbreaker says -many professional military men will head for the hills because of the seemingly hopeless situation .Politicians and business men will back out in many cases -not willing to bear the responsibility for decisions that will lead to deaths.The fight is then left to reservists,volunteers and whoever else happens to be caught in the fighting.

At the time we were reservists which was one of the reasons the hills were looking so good - home turf which some of us knew like the backs of our hands, not to mention our unit had suffered through quite a number of years of cutbacks in funding - we didn't think we'd be a priority to receive ammo, weapons, body armour (not that it was all that common then), and everything else necessary for a modern battlefield.
Fortunately most of us had our own arsenals to bolster the worn out M60s and two dozen L1A1s in the armoury, not to mention access to plenty of explosives (much of it home made).

The way we saw it, the regular soldiers would be toast in a rather short space of time and the majority of civilians would either choose not to fight, or be rolled over in a heartbeat. Us poor reservists along with whoever we could find willing and able to listen to us had the best chance of resistance long term.

Nearly 20 years later that attitude seems rather naive, but, we were young and thought we knew the answers to everything...

[Webstral]

Perhaps the Australian version of Red Dawn should be called Crescent Moon Rising.

Webstral

[headquarters]

I hear you .No critisizm intended whatsoever of you guys.
I just wanted to point out that our experiences has taught us not to trust the military to protect us - thats why we have had enthusiastic conscription and gusn in every house for 50 years ..Thats all coming to an end now ,with the increased focus on assymetrical warfare and operations abroad to quell the insurgencies in the sands and the Hindukush.

As you say - we thought the same thing back in the 90s when we were young and running our guns on the tundra up north .We were told ( unofficially )that our gear and resources were for two purposes :

start a shooting match so that no political solution would leave us in any diplomatic capacity aligned with the invading Ruskies

hold out for 14 days to allow the US- ,Roya-l,Konglichje- Marines and the Canucks to get here and push the communist aggressors out into the North Sea.
I believe we also had Bundeswehr and Italian Alpini alotted to our sector if the big one went off.

Of course -it was all winding down then, and everything was sort of in a vacuum .No idelogically motivated superpower enemy at our border anymore ? huh?

I still believe in conscription and that our military should be geared towards keeping our soverignity intact on our home turf .But I dont feel good about pulling out of all the shitholes either..

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

At the time we were reservists which was one of the reasons the hills were looking so good - home turf which some of us knew like the backs of our hands, not to mention our unit had suffered through quite a number of years of cutbacks in funding - we didn't think we'd be a priority to receive ammo, weapons, body armour (not that it was all that common then), and everything else necessary for a modern battlefield.
Fortunately most of us had our own arsenals to bolster the worn out M60s and two dozen L1A1s in the armoury, not to mention access to plenty of explosives (much of it home made).

The way we saw it, the regular soldiers would be toast in a rather short space of time and the majority of civilians would either choose not to fight, or be rolled over in a heartbeat. Us poor reservists along with whoever we could find willing and able to listen to us had the best chance of resistance long term.

Nearly 20 years later that attitude seems rather naive, but, we were young and thought we knew the answers to everything...