The Last War: 365.

[Matt Wiser]

New chapter! BZ as usual, my friend, and so on to business at hand:

Australia's taken the kind of casualties in a single day that hasn't been seen since WW II. As for the Vietnam Clause, that's going to be swept away as soon as the necessary paperwork can be taken care of.

Finding additional USAF air defense aircraft for NORAD will be a tall order. None of the AF or Navy trainers can carry weapons. IF there are any TA-4J in AMARC, they might be useful-if there are airframes not worn out-they were used for weapons training before the T-45 arrived

Hunters on the Canadian side of NORAD, well now....

The Romanians may or may not act like their grandfathers at Stalingrad....Some fought bravely, some fought for a few hours before either surrendering or taking to their heels, and some just plain ran.

Good work again, and get with 366!

[Simon Darkshade]

The WW1 conscription plebiscites in Australia were very close, with the 1916 one being 1,160,033 to 1,087,557 and the 1917 one being 1,181,747-1,015,159. They largely (but not entirely) came down to sectarian grounds, with Irish Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Daniel Mannix's advocacy playing a large role in both of them. Switch around a few thousand votes in Victoria in 1916 and the whole business is different, given that as a plebiscite, there wasn't the constitutional requirement for the double majority.

Having the CMF clause crop up in a ~2000 National Service Act is a bit shaky, given that the real opposition from the Vietnam era is long gone and there wouldn't be the same 'blood for oil' wars of choice argument to be made against it in an ongoing Cold War with not only a hostile Indonesia but the Red Big Bad behind them. I would say that it smacks of @ and the post CW attitudes of the 1990s and particularly the early 2000s GWOT; even then, the anti-war movement was predominantly on the left wing fringe in the Australian body politic and didn't get any traction until the later deterioration of OIF. The federal Labor Party of 1998-2005 did have a few anti-American firebrands, such as Mark Latham (how the winds have changed), but not enough to really exert a lot of push or pull, even in vastly different circumstances. I would argue that an ongoing CW would not see the rise of the same left elements in the federal ALP, with the NSW Right continuing to assert its power and control with a great deal of vigour. As such, I don't see the drivers for the need for a clause in the NS Act to ward off a groundswell of opposition, as it starting from a different basis to the @ political foundations. However, as it is soon to be amended, it is ultimately a cul de sac in any case.

[drmarkbailey]

Hi gents

I modelled the attack on a known old Soviet concept (and what is a current Chinese one), which is a minor extension of the Russian, WWI and WWII German, and WWII Japanese methods of projecting their sea power into areas which are a very long distance away. The aim is to cause a lot of disruption but at very low cost. That's why they used disguised merchant raiders. That they sank anything was a bonus, the aim was to disrupt via knocking off merchant ships and above all else laying minefields.

The only modern update of this is adding long-range strike via obsolete SSM systems. And WWII raiders did this too, as the German attacks on Nauru (6–8 December and 27 December 1940) by KM Komet and KM Orion. They bombarded the phosphate loading facilities and while they sank 5 ships that was not the point - the attack was an attack on Australian agriculture and by choking off a third of Australia's phosphate supply they reduced the next wheat harvest.

So thermobarics. I asked some people who know and they pointed me at open sources which noted a roughly 1:5 TNT:thermobaric

Some interesting stuff here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... 6DF1C08E30

Here, a single raider fired two dozen Shaddocks with thermobaric warheads at a very small target array (4 were fired at the Joint Operations Centre at Bungendore).SSN-3 has a 1000kg HE warhead, so I assumed a 4-ton TNT equivalent effect but with better brisance. 4 tons of TNT has a blast radius of 2064m using IATG 01.80

So the calculation (OK, it's be a while ago...) used the USAF Installation Force Protection Guide and SOURCES: EXPLOSIVE SHOCKS IN AIR, KINNEY & GRAHM, 1985; FACILITY DAMAGE AND PERSONNEL INJURY FROM EXPLOSIVE BLAST, MONTGOMERY & WARD, 1993; AND THE EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 3RD EDITION, GLASSTONE & DOLAN, 1977. Plus a bunch of stuff from Queensland Department of Mines.

Thermobarics generate a pressure wave stronger than TNT. Roughly 3psi will seriously injure people and kill about 5-10% of them (so 700-800 feet from a 4 ton blast). 5psi = universal injuries and widespread fatalities. That's about 500 feet. Thermobarics like those used are designed to burst above conventional buildings. Targets includes the Russell complex, R1, R2, R5, R6, (about 12,000 people, these buildings would be instantly pancaked), Campbell park Office (2000) Parliament building (5000), DFAT, Attorney-Generals/Prime Minister and Cabinet (5000 and also pancaked with massive destruction to every multistory around them) for 8 of the Shaddocks, but they used 20 on the city. Obviously they'd double up on the high value targets, some errors were assumed like one detonating above the CBD and a second miss flattening Telstra Tower on Black Mountain, and all except Campbell park are in high density areas of the inner city. Around Parliament the 5psi circles overlap. Some of the 10psi (no survivor) circles also overlap there as they all do over Russell.

I calculated roughly 48,000 people inside the 5psi radii of whom about half were inside the 10psi radii and remember that pressure is way higher than this with thermobarics, these figures are for TNT groundburst not thermobaric airburst. The targets are extremely vulnerable without even earthquake building codes (they are rare in Australia). They are good quality builds (nothing like PRC tofu-dregs construction: google that and make sure you don't bruise your chin as your jaw hits the floor), but not designed to withstand blast.

But I wanted to be conservative, and estimated 25,000 overall. Injured who knows? Including everything, probably 100,000 for a total of around 125,000 casualties.

Ok, in some ghastly reality, double that. A thermobaric strike on this scale is actually a lot more efficient than a single nuke of 5kt, airburst. Operation Gomorrah dropped 2,400 tons of bombs for an explosive mass of perhaps 1000 tons or less and levelled Hamburg, killing 37,000: conventional attacks are far more explosives-efficient than nukes as the explosives are much more evenly spread over the cityscape.

Anyway that's the intent of a decapitation strike. Basically, Canberra would be functionally destroyed as a governance centre for most of a decade.

Recall this was messaging to NATO based on a very, very low-level version of a 1970s Soviet plan to message NATO (IIRC called Barricade) about nuclear thresholds by dropping a citybuster on all 8 of our major cities. Another version of that apparently planted a nuke on every Australian city over 35,000. The Sovs were pretty evil bastards. Australia was selected as it was allied, culturally identical, and so remote as to have no direct impact on NATO.


To answer Jan, the House would not be rebuilt. Too costly, and too vulnerable. I think they'd Coventry Cathedral it. Russell has to be rebuilt but it'd be deep underground, probably in the Brindabella's. The old parliament house would serve pretty much symbolically, with the actual facility and government complexes being built under the lake between there and the Russell site, probably 400-500 metres down. it'd take years to do and include an entire tube system to serve it and provide shelter for the city's population. In the meantime, plans and site-clearing at best.

Cheers: mark

[Canman_v3]

Great chapter!

It’s been a “few” years since I read the earlier chapter, but what happened in Australia? IIRC/based on Marks answer above, they had a cargo ship carried a bunch of SSM, and slammed the capital?

[James1978]

It’s been a “few” years since I read the earlier chapter, but what happened in Australia? IIRC/based on Marks answer above, they had a cargo ship carried a bunch of SSM, and slammed the capital?

Correct.
A Soviet "Raider"/mine layer off the Australian east coast disguised as a merchant ship was modified to carry twenty-ish surplus SS-N-3 Shaddock missiles. Said missiles having their guidance systems greatly upgraded and their 1000kg HE warheads replaced with thermobaric warheads. The Raider rippled off its full load of missiles at Canberra - eighteen of which were on target, and two more of which still hit things that hurt. There was almost no warning.

I've been working with Mark to work out in Google Earth what the attack looked like.
Consider this provisional, but if you translated the attack to Washington DC, roughly the following were destroyed in the middle of the work day:
- West Wing of the West House
- offices of most (all ??) Cabinet Secretaries
- Capitol Building and every Congressional office building
- Eisenhower Executive Office Building
- Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building (Main Justice)
- J. Edgar Hoover Building (FBI HQ)
- Supreme Court
- elements of the Smithsonian
- Harry S. Truman Department of State Building
- various Executive Departments / Agencies housed in targeted office buildings
- Pentagon, incl. NMCC and command centers for USN, USAF, US Army
- Northern Command HQ
- CIA HQ
- NSA HQ
- National Imagery and Mapping Agency / National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency HQ

[Canman_v3]

That’s gonna hurt. If this was the US, not sure if a response wouldn’t have included a special purpose weapon or two.(eg USSR bullying countries that can’t fight back).

IIRC, some of those buildings on the list were also hit by a cruise missile strike in the time line? I have vague memory of either CIA or NSA being attacked.

[James1978]

IIRC, some of those buildings on the list were also hit by a cruise missile strike in the time line? I have vague memory of either CIA or NSA being attacked.

IIRC, the Capitol Building was hit during a joint session of Congress where POTUS asked for a Declaration of War. POTUS got out, but a LOT of Congress didn't make it out. The building is wrecked.
The Pentagon was hit, but not destroyed.
I'm not sure what else around DC was hit.

I don't think Fort Meade (NSA) was hit directly, but the attacks on the power grid in the northeastern US did impact their ability to operate at full capacity for a while.

[Bernard Woolley]

IIRC, the Capitol Building was hit during a joint session of Congress where POTUS asked for a Declaration of War. POTUS got out, but a LOT of Congress didn't make it out. The building is wrecked.

Not quite. POTUS was evacuated from the WH and there wasn't a joint session at the time. To quote from the appropriate chapters:

“Bill, I’ve just this very moment seen a sight that I never thought I’d see, except in my worst nightmares, the evacuation of the President by helicopter from the White House.
“This was a scenario beloved of doomsday films, and novels, but it is actually happening right now.
“As you can see behind me the Capitol is still in the process of evacuation, while senior Congressional leaders are being evacuated by helicopters of the USAF’s 1st Helicopter Squadron. To where we don’t yet know, and perhaps the authorities don’t yet know either.”
“Jake.” The anchorman said, a look of real concern on his face. “This is Bill.
“You’ve done your job, those missiles can only be a few minutes away, take some kind of shelter.”
“Okay, Bill, we’re leaving now.”

The casualties reported from the Capitol, however, were much worse (there had been some who muttered about ‘poetic justice’).
It seemed that there had been reluctance among some of the Congressmen to evacuate the building when ordered to, which had tragically led to not only the deaths of many Congressmen unnecessarily, but also of Capitol Police and members of the USAF’s 1st Helicopter Squadron who had been trying to evacuate the complex.

The President looked over the casualty list once again. It was a mixture of famous and utterly obscure names. Among them were the majority and minority leaders, the Speaker of the House and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate, as well as other prominent names.