Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Australia Gearing Up Down Under

I have been reading several articles over the past few months about how Australia is modernizing its military from top to bottom. The latest article is about the purchase of several M1A1 Abrahms tanks.

We need strong allies these days, glad to see our friends in Oz are taking China seriously.

Oz is becoming China South. Down there a few years ago and they are everywhere. Probably not out in the bush but in Melbourne they were tons of them. Friend who lives there confirms they are taking over.

We visited in 2016, and they were indeed everywhere. Rude bastards as well!

Australia bought 50 or 60 M1A2 Abrahms back in 2005 to replace their aged fleet of Leopard 1A2s. I think this purchase is a simple upgrade of those M1A2 to the latest standard, along with complimentary supporting vehicles like the Hercules, Armoured Engineering support vehicles, etc.

Sixty tanks should do a great job of defending our huge borders.

I guess we have limited places where they might launch an attack and try and take over. Sydney is probably the only place when naval takeover might make some sense.

The american comms facilities here would be a more viable target but they are fairly remote with limited access.

Friendly takeover seems to be more the case.

I think they are buying 70 of the SEP3 versions, which are the best made. No word on what will happen with the other M1's, but I can't see them being retired.

I believe Australia still has a very robust rail system, so these tanks can be deployed rapidly where they are needed. If they have the truck transporters then they can go anywhere there are roads.

In any event, just 15 or 20 of these beasts ending up in an enemy area of operations would cause a lot of issues for the invader.

Australian population too small to be able to defend the continent. Same land area as the CONUS but 5x less railway, 9x less roads and our military is 25x smaller. Realistically any enemy that can land in Australia, meaning esssentially defying NATO, the UN and US is going to be too much for us anyway. The Russians and chinese have individual missile cruisers that could take out our assets unopposed from way off, and thats conventional weapons, not them arming nuke payloads, which for the record we also dont possess

Im ex- army but realistic. I also dont understand this return to conventional sabre rattling anyway, eg china vs Aus, Russia vs USA etc. Did we forget all the top players still have nuclear weapons?

These are very few Abrams tanks made new these days. The plant is all about remanufacturing them. The ones Australia bought 15 years ago came off the same remanufacturing production line as US ones. The only way you could visually tell them apart was the little red Kangaroo painted on the side. They probably lacked the DU armour package for Australian conditions, and maybe one or two comms systems which are not used by Australia.

The 'new' ones will be remanufactured just like the US Army ones, but possibly again without the DU armour package, etc.
The 'old' Aussie ones will just go into the start of the remanufacturing cycle.

Australia has truck transporters for the tanks, and they fit the amphibious assault ships they have. Also the C17s that they have can carry the Abrams.

Yes, a few on a deep cavalry raid will do terrible things to your logistics chain. They may even last long enough to get home if they have ground based air defence that can keep up with them, hostile air is their single greatest enemy (followed closely by friendly air).

Between these tanks, the F35's, and now the retired Los Angles class attack subs they want to lease/purchase Oz is going to one tough nut to crack. And when it comes to war, deterrence is ALWAYS your best option.

America builds super carriers hoping they will never be used in combat.

The people might be tough to crack, the military is too small in itself. 7-8 thousand arms corps personnel and 20,000 miles of coastline...We had the russian missile carrier Varyag in our waters during a visit by putin a few years back. it was written up in the papers and the consensus was this ship could defeat our entire navy

Realistically the way we hold onto a continent full of farming and mining resources is staying in the US good books. You fellas tell us we need another million tons of left over military hardware, we say where do we sign.

That was the time our PM was going to "shirtfront" Putin. Putin may like riding horses bareback, but PM Tony was pretty handy as well. One of the problems an invading army would have here is the size and nature of the land. Most of our population live around the coast, and then mostly the Eastern seaboard. With a population of only 25 million in a land mass the size of the Continental US, we have plenty of room to manouvre.

Let China have the woke Aussie covidians. With their humans rights violations. Now it looks like Covid is finally done. Never forget the lunacy of the people who went nuts and made it a religion. The aussies and the keywiis are guilty.

tellus how tank warfare is going in Ukraine, Bloody useless unless in a troop support. Now doubt the Oz turretheads will try to justify their obsolescence

damn that's sad to hear. training with Aussie and Brit soldiers are some of best times in my life.

unfortunately like in the US, throw in a bio weapon virus like Covid before an invasion and the weak ignorant populace would crumble immediately . Makes me think the timing of covid was not a coincidence

A coworker was down there doing some consulting on surface mine revegetation. Said Chinese ships were literally lined up near the coast to haul off most of the continents minerals. Thought they might take over by just moving all of the land up to the Chinese coast.

How many covidian US states have you saved fella? I keep hearing a lot of "my states okay, screw that other state" .

They took the U out of USA right from under your noses.

I've spent some great time in the company of the various US citizens I've known over the years. However very few of those people would carry on like Cummins cowboy, who I doubt has been properly house trained. Ever nation has it's citizens we'd rather not acknowledge, and The US has more than it's share. As far as making making up stories about us caving in to the ridiculous demands by China, you appear to have overlooked the small fact that our current PM has got China well off side by standing up to them. As far as COVID is concerned, we've had one of the best records of survivability while some of you mob rabbit on about your bloody "rights".
I recently lost a good mate from Texas to COVID. He thought it was just a cold too. He had 3 tours of Afghanistan as a sniper. It's pretty damn foul that he survived those tours only to succumb to a Chinese virus. If you want to criticise a nation or its citizens, firstly check your facts, then make sure your own house is in order.
By the way I own 8 firearms and I can have more if I want to. The last time we had a mass shooting was back in the 90's, it's almost daily news in the US.