I saw 'Tomorrow When the War Began' earlier this week. It was a very good movie! Extremely good; the books are even better, so I'm told. It is primarily a young adults book, so it illustrates the teenage angst that is prevalent in youth. And all the emotional things they face, exacerbated by an fictitious invasion from an unknown military power. Which results in a very interesting movie, if not a little grating with the whole emotional skew. But, I suppose it's required for a compelling teenage book. So, what I was more interested in was the invasion of Australia and how it was undertaken and how they dealt with it. Some of the decisions the characters made wouldn't have been my personal first choice; But, it still got the job done within the confines of the story, so, that's all that matters.
I'd like to assess the likelihood of an invasion. So, first up, to invade Australia you would need plentiful resources at your disposal. Including people and equipment. Secondly, there needs to be a political or economical purpose for the invasion. Simply, if you aren't going to get anything out of it, they're not going to try and take it! And thankfully for us, we're on an island, a big island, and there's plenty of resources, but nothing that nobody wants to take, yet.
Looking at all the major players in the pacific region, nobody really has any punch to pack currently. Indonesia, India, Papua New Guinea, The phillipines, China. Those are probably the closest nations to ours, but all of them, apart from China, don't really have the capacity for invasion yet. And all of them definitely don't have reason to. As far as China goes, I don't think we're high on their list of reasons to worry, or of any interest for that matter.
Furthermore, the entire logistics of invading an Island. To get here, from whereever else, you need to travel over the ocean. This means you're supply lines are going to be long and open. Whether by truck, plane, or boat you still need to transports food, weapons and ammunition, medical supplies and ALL of the things that your army requires. After you've reached Australian shores, you have to transport troops and supplies to the other parts of the country to take territory. Australia is huge, there's no doubt about that, it takes around 12 hours from Brisbane, to Sydney, to Melbourne. That's time, money, and petrol! Not to mention having to defeat any resistance you encounter along the way. This means that it all gives the Australian military time to prepare defences. It would not be easy.
I often think 'how would I do it?'. If I had the supplies, and the people; the power to invade Australia. What would I do first?
I would have a definite structure; A plan designed to achieve specific goals.
1. Neutralise Enemy Resistance - Using the element of surprise, attacking before they (we) have a chance to prepare strong defences. Using the false sense of security as a sword against us. As I suggested before, an army is only ever as strong as their supply line. Causing extreme damages to air and sea capabilities will ensure that safety of your lines, and also of your 'beach-heads' which can be difficult to maintain if you're constantly being attacked.
2. Secure points of entry - This is a natural progression from #1. You want to take the ports of the country; Airports, seaports etc. These are places built specifically for the modes of transport you utilize and have the capacity to accommodate your vehicles. Your boats can off-load on the docks which will be able to deal with the equipment you're deploying, just as if you were a cargo ship. And airports would act similarly (With the exception of military airports which may or may not have had their facilities destroyed doing the initial attack).
3. Acquire topical resources - A small point after securing your hold, in my opinion, would be the gathering of local resources in the areas that you take, or have taken. The life of war is measured on the bellies of the soldiers that fight it. As a developed nation, Australia will have a plethora of sources of food, water, and other such items which can be utilized by an invading force, further decreasing their dependency on supply lines specifically. As a rule, anything you can take and use from the territory you're invading, do it!
4. Spread out - This is the more important part of the entire exercise: Obtaining territory. This is the part where you're achieving your major and minor goals. Whether that be to take national resources like oil, gold and other minerals, uranium, etc or entirely political goals as in a coupe d'tat. Either way, this is where that shit gets done. When you start encroaching on new territory that is where you start to engage more and more of the enemy, including insurgents and such. Following my structure, using surprise, ideally you won't have much of a military response (not taking into consideration the ANZUS treaty).
And yeah.. I think that's practically it. After #4 you're practically taking, and maintaining, territories and seeking out your particularly military goals for the exercise. War won. But, for that to work you would need so much money, people and equipment that you would need to have some kind of economic win in it, otherwise the cost is barely worthwhile.
Right now Australia is a country of multi-culturalism, mostly, and a place that alot of people identify with and almost love. Nobody will be invading Australia any time soon, no matter how much fear mongering people put into the media. But, of course, this might be always be the case.
Signing off.
