Modelling > Land

Antipodean Armourfest!

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Volkodav:
This is some pure silliness I came up with today. 

Instead of being light Infantry centric (due I suspect to do politically driven preference relating to lower costs) the Australian Army inexplicably becomes absolutely armour mad.  Not just lots of armoured vehicles but lots of different types of armoured vehicles even to the point of maintaining different types / makes of MBTs in different units.  The RAAC has its Tank heavy Armoured Brigades with different vehicles in the regular and reserve brigades.  The Royal Australian Regiment (RAR) has an Armoured Support Company in each battalion with MBT/CS, AT/DFS and rec platoons.  The Cavalry deploys regiments of medium, light, tracked and wheeled varieties along with regular and reserve regiments having different equipment too.  There is Australian Parachute Regiment (APR) airborne brigade with their own unique light armour and also the Royal Australian Marines with their own as well.

The Cavalry in particular could be divided into Horse, Dragoons, Lancers, Hussars, Light Horse, Mounted Rifles and Mounted Infantry; each with its own organization and table of equipment to fill a specific imagined role within the ADFs ORBAT.

When all is said and done I recon I could get almost any western AFV into ADF markings somewhere in this hodge podge collection of heavy metal.  By 1970 there could be Chieftains and Centurions in the Armoured Brigades with CVR(T) in support; S Tanks and M-48s in the RAR; Leo 1 & 2, AMX 30, Jagtpanzer Kanon, Lynx, AMX 10RC AMX-13, Sheridan etc. (and many more) in CAV, M-60, M-41 ;) in the RAM........

Why you ask? Well.....ummmmm.......just cos.....

Jeffry Fontaine:
Do you have an idea for the OoB/ToE for this concept?





OoB = Order of Battle
ToE = Table of Organization [and] Equipment

Volkodav:
Working on it, and the back story too.

Basically it starts in WWII as a necessity, using what you have where you have it, with different types of units developing different orbats and tactics around what they can lay their hands on at the time.  Then rather than consolidating and reorganizing along a common structure each of the different types of battle group becomes a type of battalion, regiment,or brigade in its own right with old equipment replaced with new.

I will probably need a spreadsheet to make sense of it all.

Another way to look at it,in particular with the Cavalry, is each unit is an independent regiment in its own right extending this to it's equipment as well as its uniforms.  Each is funded and supported from a separate bucket of money.

 

deathjester:
Hmm, interesting - is that going to be like different states supplying their own units from their state budgets?  Rather than from a central purchasing office / department?

Volkodav:
Central funding but not necessarily central procurement for major items.  Probably a fit form and function commonality, common calibres etc but not common vehicles.  Maybe a funding model that purchases the equipment plus an additional quantity for attrition, spares etc. for a set service life.  After ten years the inventory is reviewed and the equipment upgraded or replaced and the attrition and spares replenished accordingly.

It will probably be a hybrid set up where the Armoured Brigades, RAR, APR, RAM and Divisional Cavalry Regiments are part of the standing army (both regular and reserve elements) and are equipped according to role.  The remainder of the Cavalry remains part of the Militia with each Regiment being funded and equipped separately depending on role and geography.

The idea with the armoured support company within the RAR for instance was a deployed battalion managed to obtain a troop of CS Matildas, a troop of Light Tank Mk IV and a troop / platoon of AT guns.  This works and the battalion hangs onto them and other battalions duplicate the capability, by the end of the war it has morphed into an Armoured Support Company consisting CS Platoon with Churchill MkVIII Crocodiles, an AT platoon with Archers, a rec platoon with M-24s and a service platoon with Universal carriers and half tracks in each line battalion.  By Korea the line battalions had been replaced by the RAR with the Armoured Support Company remaining the same except for the Archers being replaced with an indigenous casemate type TD.  By Vietnam the Churchills had been replaced with Centurion MkVs, the carriers and halftracks with M-113 and by the 80/90s it would have been Leopards, S-Tanks, MRVs and M-113.

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