Australia's Vietnam without Conscription.

I think you rely too much on good political decisions, which are at a premium in Australia when it comes to defence. I think the only way to get the military capability to intervene in East Timor is to buy the equipment while committed to wars in Borneo and Vietnam.
 
I think you rely too much on good political decisions, which are at a premium in Australia when it comes to defence. I think the only way to get the military capability to intervene in East Timor is to buy the equipment while committed to wars in Borneo and Vietnam.

I'm not quite sure what your argument is there . . .

The decisions I'm talking about would be alternative history.

More to the point, why would the Government restructure the army or buy amphibious ships while engaged in an expensive war in Vietnam?
 
The govt reintroduced NS, bought 24 F111, 3 DDG and 700 M113 in 1964 to deal with real and perceived problems mainly emanating from our Confrotation with Indonesia over West Papua in 1962 and Malaysia in 1963/4. Just sending a battalion group does not strengthen the US relatinship nor does it threaten Indonesia by showing them how we can sustain a Brigade on ops for years if need be.
 
So in terms of kit what other bits and pieces would you have preferred?
Eg Uk continues with TSR2, Kestral asa pure GA aircraft, swing wing Lightning as naval fighter and RAF air superiority, Gyrodyne kept with....Aussie for any of those ?
Also surely you'd have preferred Nimrod over those P3B's had the UK gone for VC10 instead of the Comet airframe?
Others, surely the CVR range meets Aussie requirements more strongly than the M113 ok so perhaps its around 10 years later than when it was needed...
Anything else?
(Apart from Invincible?)
 
I like the TSR2, but I'm more than happy with the gear we bought from that 1964 spending spree.

I would like to have picked up the Centaur after she was laid up in reserve in 1965, she would go nicely into our fleet for a couple of decades or more.
 
I just had another thought to revive which would be best put into this thread.

IOTL Australia was slow to withdraw, the CGSC fought proposals to reduce 1ATF down to 2 btns in line with the US withdrawal.

If we weren't using conscription and had manpower issues would we have drawn down faster, and would this have made much difference?
 
This happened in a CMF unit from the bush? These CMF units were pretty renowned for being full of men who were either stereotyped as Country Party hacks/sons (an unfair stereotype, but it was there--my father knew some men like that because he was Country Party), or, more accurately, employees in primary industries which had always had access to plenty of exemptions from conscription/overseas service in the past.

But I'm really surprised that the militia chain of command was asking such a hypothetical (unauthorised, even?) question and using it as an excuse to dismiss men.

This would be a massive scandal if it happened now.

I think it is time for you to read _Defending the National Tuckshop._ Australia's extra-parliamentary right has maintained networks of anti-Labour activists. This is particularly true in armed rural organisations. As can be seen in _Defending the National Tuckshop_ the extra-parliamentary right was fundamentally loyal in nature; only activated accidentally due to racial and Labourist fears; and, was planned as a way to ensure the continuity (in the 1920s and 1930s) of the constitution that "we really knew we had meant to have written" in case of emergency.

I'm not suggesting that such a complex survived intact into the 1960s, but I'm suggesting that a streak of extra-legal armed loyalism exists in rural communities, even if it has degraded into the "National-Independent" kind of discourse. Such a mentality can readily encompass strongly encouraging resignations in situations where "loyalty" is in question.

(The towns were no better, see the Catholic versus Protestant intrigues in Government departments.)

Yet another thread in the rich fabric of Australian cultures.

yours,
Sam R.
 
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