Australia Twilight War & After...

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Olefin

I think it also comes down to what is canon - I use the original release as canon so version 2.0 or 2.2 isnt canon to me anymor than 2013 is

V2.x is a direct cut and paste from V1 for the most part. V2.x has only expanded on V1 and made a handful of adjustments to account for changes in equipment (the LAV-75/M8 for example). As far as the timelines are concerned. There's almost NO difference from November 1996.

Originally Posted by Olefin

And I also agree with you that Australian forces overseas will be either volunteers who went to serve with British units or will be small in size - i.e. a battalion at most, posssibly just scattered companies

Nope, try a platoon at best, and they certainly won't be sent anywhere after war with Indonesia breaks out, and even before then won't be sent to remote places such as Kenya where Australia has absolutely no interests to worry about.

Originally Posted by Olefin

face it - even if they dont get into a shooting war with Indonesia they have a lot of coastline to patrol and a lot of refugees who will be trying to get there

We manage. Sometimes not well due to political interference, but when tensions increase, refugee boats tend to get "accidentally" sunk. Our greatest defence against an influx of refugees is the vast empty deserts refugees are likely to encounter. They may make it here, but it's extremely unlikely they'll survive long if they're not picked up by the authorities.

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

I remember an issue of "Soldier" magazine not long after Gulf War 1 that had a picture of an Australian officer in Aussie camo uniform and slouch hat (is that the right term?) who had served with the 1st UK Armoured Division during its drive into Iraq.

Yes, Slouch hat is the correct term.
WWIII is a lot different to WWII. 70 years ago, Australia still had a lot of emotional ties to the UK, today that's a distant memory for the most part. This is due mainly to the inability of the UK to assist Australia against the Japanese and Australia building closer defence ties with the US.

There will always be a few exchanges of officers and NCOs (there was a British Captain attached to my unit back in '91), but they're fairly few and far between - maybe one in a thousand. Given Australia's current regular army numbers just 30,000 personnel, we're talking about 30 on exchange. Add in Naval and RAAF and it's 59,000, so maybe 60 or so on exchange.
And that's world wide, not just to the UK.

Come WWIII a few observers may be deployed, and the 2.x Nautical & Aviation book has Australian UN peacekeepers in Cyprus, but besides that and the Australians mentioned as being in Korea (probably UN also) Australia simply doesn't have the manpower available, especially with the Indonesian conflict closer to home.

And besides small arms production and ship building, I don't believe we have any serious military industrial capacity. We're not going to be producing tanks, APCs, artillery, missiles, etc to equip additional forces (light infantry is the best we could manage). We don't even have enough APCs now to go around the reserve units (usually a single Squadron has to service an entire infantry Brigade) - most of the heavier equipment (rightly) being with the regular army.