The ANZACs in T2k

[StainlessSteelCynic]

No I'm not but, what info are you after?

[Legbreaker]

The ability for Australian and New Zealand refineries to switch to light sweet oil (as produced in WA and currently shipped to Asian markets) rather than the heavier crude imports they've been using for the previous 50+ years. What sort of efficiency loss would there be, production delays during changeover, etc.
My own research seems to indicate there's only one refinery in the country in the 1990s that had the ability to quickly switch from one feed stock type to another (up to three times in a day apparently). The others don't seem to have that ability built in.
Knowing what problems and delays there may be is critical to deciding on what's going on throughout the country and may perhaps explain why Australia apparently avoided being nuked.

On another vaguely related topic, I just found this website a moment ago. http://australiansteam.com
Quote "This site provides an up-to-date listing of all surviving Australian steam locomotives, including their location and status. More than 600 locomotives are detailed, indexed by their state of origin and first user."
Going to be loads of fun trawling through there and figuring out which ones may be pressed back into service when diesel runs short.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Okay so just to get this straight in my own head, do you mean processing already refined sweet light oil or being able to process sour/heavy crude into sweet light?
In "theory", any refinery that is processing sour and/or heavy oils could convert some of that output to sweet light oils but it requires some expansive and obviously expensive infrastructure.
There's a brief explanation of the processes involved on the following page: -
https://www.afpm.org/The-Refinery-Process/#process

How many refineries in Australia have these facilities? Not many but I'm not certain for sure as I only know of two that would have been operating in the 1980s-90s period (the Shell refinery at Clyde NSW and the BP refinery in Kwinana WA). It's not like we have dozens of crude refineries though and they tend to be found in/near major cities.
I don't know if you are aware of the following site but it could be useful for you (and anyone looking to see where oil facilities are)
https://www.refinerymaps.com/

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Okay so just to get this straight in my own head, do you mean processing already refined sweet light oil or being able to process sour/heavy crude into sweet light?

Crude that's been refined, is not longer refereed to as sweet, light, etc. It's referred to as the components it's been split into (kerosene, diesel, etc).
I need to know what efficiency loss there would be in using sweet crude as the feedstock for a refinery designed for heavy, thicker crude. What problems may arise which could potentially damage the equipment and restrict output.
Given we're told elsewhere that Australia wasn't nuked, I need to find a logical way of creating a serious fuel shortage for Australia and New Zealand. Part of the answer will be sabotage, but that can't account for all of it. A lot I'll need to attribute to engineering, supply and transportation limitations.

[Legbreaker]

I've spent the last hour or so looking at maps of the border region and noted there's really only two border crossing points - the main point on the north coast on the Vanimo - Jayapura highway at Wutung, and another VERY secondary point about 75km north of the southern coastline and the small town of Botar.
As can be seen in the two photos, the southern route is FAR from suitable as an invasion route, and the northern one, well...it's got more than it's fair share of problems too. Clearly water-borne transport is going to be the preferred method of supplying troops where possible, but that's very vulnerable to sea and air attack.
The border itself is extremely porous, but that's largely offset by the total lack of other roads beyond these two. Some river traffic is possible, BUT the majority of the rivers in the region flow more north-south rather than the needed east-west - their usefulness is most likely restricted to local transportation of patrols and smaller units/supplies, and totally unsuited to carrying the logistical needs of the invasion forces (or the defenders for that matter too).
So, given the terrain is so damn hostile to a large, land based force, what causes Indonesia to risk absolutely everything on what appears to be a "bridge too far" scenario?
So far my thoughts are NBC attacks on more western areas of the country forcing them to find uncontaminated areas to move into, the discovery of badly needed minerals in the border regions, and perhaps even political stupidity.

Northern route
Attachment 4173

Southern route
Yes, it really is THAT bad!
Attachment 4174

[StainlessSteelCynic]

As we know, aside from nationalistic ambition where they had once decided that all of Borneo and PNG should be Indonesian you don't just launch an invasion without some sort of payoff.
There's plenty of mineral wealth in PNG and that would be an obvious temptation for Indonesia but the root cause still remains to be answered - what causes them to "need" whatever it is that can be found in PNG?

Is the need more ephemeral, a quick distraction for whatever problems they're having at home (and it provides an easy reason to conscript the "trouble-makers" and have them shipped off to the war)?
Is it something less materialistic, the need for more land for their own overpopulated islands for example?

Could it be the spectre of starvation? They can barely produce enough food for themselves (except for rice and even then, they were still importing rice until 2012 - they needed to grow at least 76 million tons of unhusked rice to enable them to cut back on rice imports). In 2012 they still needed to import 1.6 million tons of soyabeans, 2.3 million tons of sugar and 200,000 tons of beef.

Problems for agriculture include unpredictable weather (in particularl, heavy rains) and conversion of large amounts of land from ag use to industrial use.
All this has been going on for decades and includes millions of tonnes of material wastage due to corruption, inefficiency and neglect. Combine that with the rapid halt of much needed imports, it could be enough for a desperate government to try and grab some primary industry from PNG or to even try "pulling a Falklands" trick to distract the population from bigger problems.

Indonesia has relied heavily on imports from various Asian, North American and European countries, China being a big supplier. With what's happening between the Soviet Union and China, imports are going to dry up pretty damned quick.
Although this page is relevant for the current period, I think we could assume that Indonesia was building to this level of demand for a few decades before the late 2000s. It gives a good look at just what the Indos were wanting from other nations.
http://www.worldsrichestcountries.co...a_imports.html


As for the crude oil bit, yeah, just shows how little I know about it haha

[Legbreaker]

Yeah, all that's basically the way I'm thinking too, but given the poor nature of the only two roads, and the ease in which those roads, plus the sea routes could be interdicted (as little as a couple of men with a machinegun could cause everything to grind to a sudden halt, particularly along that southern land route) there's got to be a REALLY SOLID reason for them to risk it.
Part of it could be Australia's involvement in Korea giving them the impression they'd really only have the PNG defence forces to deal with - roughly a total strength of just 2,500 people spread across all areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_..._Defence_Force
Some Indonesian units will undoubtedly be sent to Australia's mainland for low level insurgency and sabotage (prime targets including oil refineries) which based on Australian military exercises in the 80's and 90's could tie up in excess of a brigade just in hunting them down (perhaps three times that many, or even more, providing security at expected targets).
That may just give the Indonesian offensive some small chance of success, or at least enough that they think it's worth trying...

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

As for the crude oil bit, yeah, just shows how little I know about it haha

Don't worry, a week ago I didn't know all that much either! This has been a VERY steep learning curve!

[Targan]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

How many refineries in Australia have these facilities? Not many but I'm not certain for sure as I only know of two that would have been operating in the 1980s-90s period (the Shell refinery at Clyde NSW and the BP refinery in Kwinana WA).

And with Garden Island (home of the biggest naval base on the western side of the continent, and a submarine base) in line of sight across the water from the Kwinana refinery, that whole area is a great big juicy target. If it wasn't nuked in the Twilight War someone would have tried to wreck it some other way.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Targan

And with Garden Island (home of the biggest naval base on the western side of the continent, and a submarine base) in line of sight across the water from the Kwinana refinery, that whole area is a great big juicy target. If it wasn't nuked in the Twilight War someone would have tried to wreck it some other way.

That one throwaway line in "What's Polish for G'day" is really screwing things up for me at the moment. Without nukes, just how do you damage a refinery to the point where it's production is seriously degraded for a period of at least a few years?
The answer I think (and somebody PLEASE give me more options!) is sabotage and commando attacks.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

But it's a bloody long way just to do a one-off demo job.

I'm inclined to think that a more expansive campaign of sabotage would be planned (and maybe they even have the ability to pull it off). I wouldn't be at all surprised given Indonesia's history of communism if they didn't recieve some encouragement and maybe even assistance from the Soviets. Particularly given that Garden Island and Fremantle harbour were significant for the US Navy at the time (and not simply for R&R, was also a major resupply point for food & fuel and even low level maintenance from what I understand). Plus we had Harry Holt running full bore along the same coast.


Personal anecdote.
Living in Perth during the 1980s, we could always tell a US carrier group was going to be visiting soon - we'd see the C-2 Greyhounds flying into Perth airport.

Another personal anecdote.
Way back when we were doing the LLOps training up north, during one of the Spiderman Exercises, one of the Pilbara Regt patrols picked up someone wandering around in the bush near the exercise area.
Apparently he claimed he was a tourist and was very lost. Turns out he was Indonesian. Turns out there was no record of him entering Australia by the normal accepted means.
Turns out about a week earlier, an unidentified low flying aircraft had been picked up by air traffic control as being in Australian airspace without logging a flight plan.
Further investigation supposedly identified him as an Indon army officer...

Now some of this was related to a group of us from our training WO because he was actually being posted to the Pilbara Regt as his next assignment and he was in touch with them regularly. All I know for certain is that someone was picked up and identified as Indonesian. The claims that he was an Indon army officer could have been soldier's stories. However I heard about the unidentified low flying aircraft from a second source many months after the Ex. (but that still could have been soldier's stories, just in this case it got picked up by civvies).
Still, it's one of those things that make you go "Hmm".

[Legbreaker]

I'm thinking given Australia's generally multicultural population, it would be fairly easy for Indonesian soldiers/saboteurs to hide in plain sight just by wearing civilian clothing and keeping their weaponry well hidden. If even just one got hired by a refinery, they could do some serious damage over a period of time just by "accidentally" setting a valve the wrong way, or hitting a switch at the wrong time. Add in a few explosive charges here and there and well....
Even a more overt attack such as a raid on a critical facility (power distribution, generation, etc) could do a lot to cripple the country, or at least the local area, and unless those involved were caught in the act, again it wouldn't be that hard to blend in with the rest of the population, especially if they'd been living in the area for a few months or more.

I started re-reading a book from my collection last night which I probably should have picked up weeks ago - "Australians at War - Modern Military Towards 2000" published in 1989. https://biblio.co.uk/book/australian...0/d/1032384970 The first chapter which was written by several retired senior Australian officers details a scenario in which raiders keep Australian forces occupied over in WA, while a landing takes place in far north Queensland. The opponent isn't named, but it's fairly clear who they were talking about....
The scenario (both parts) would work very nicely in tying up a large number of Australian troops and ships. A very nice diversion while the main Indonesian force moves into PNG.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

That one throwaway line in "What's Polish for G'day" is really screwing things up for me at the moment. Without nukes, just how do you damage a refinery to the point where it's production is seriously degraded for a period of at least a few years?
The answer I think (and somebody PLEASE give me more options!) is sabotage and commando attacks.

IIRC, Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising starts with someone sabotaging an oil refinery. As a result, it basically self-destructs. I imagine that repairing the damage would take at least a year or two. It's been a while since I read that part (I skipped it on subsequent readings) so I might not be remembering it accurately.

Leg, are you trying to avoid nuking Australia? That Garden Island/Kwinana refinery site that Targan mentioned would definitely be on the Soviet's list. Also, the prologue to Mad Max 2 (the Road Warrior, in the U.S.) strongly implies the use of nuclear weapons on oil refineries in Australia.

IMO, you can't really have a true T2K setting without at least a bit of nuke damage.

[Olefin]

I dont see every country as being nuked - you can have a lot of damage just from a country coming apart at the seams - for proof look at the rolling ball of fun that is today's Somalia for instance

just rioting and panic from the expectation of being nuked could be more than enough to really screw things up - and add in some fun things like major forest fires/crop failure/sabotage attacks and you could really not be in a good place very quickly

however there are definitely targets for nukes in Australia even if all you did was go after the US tracking stations that are in the country

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Leg, are you trying to avoid nuking Australia?

Yes, because of that line in "What's Polish for G'day" where an Australian SAS trooper mentions Australia is a member of the "Organisation of Non-irradiated Nations."
However, they do indicate France is also a member of that unofficial group, and it's my belief they would almost certainly have received at least a handful of nukes to ports near their borders. In that light it's just possible a small warhead or two may have been dropped on remote Australian targets, but certainly not on the major cities. Still, I want to do as much damage as possible using conventional means before applying nukes (if any).