The Last War? : Chapter 382

[James1978]

I thought Magnum was a Captain?

If Wiki is to be believed, he was a Lieutenant Commander, then became a Commander in he final episode.

IIRC, Bernard made him a captain.

I went digging to check. He's mentioned as a Captain in Ch.203.

[Simon Darkshade]

Home now, so more capacity to expand.

The entire flow of the event can work, but perhaps just with a bit of tweaking:

- Having ASIO (note that it is not 'the ASIO' anymore than it would be 'the MI5') get a further lead on a potential threat from a sleeper cell
- Emphasise very heavy security of the movement of the assets. possibly with a decoy 'very heavy convoy' of some older armoured vehicles on the streets, whilst defector and officers are slipped from the safe house to RAAF Base Richmond, then put aboard the first available plane
- Maybe throw in a sentence about there being a very noticeable military presence on the streets in response to the Canberra attack, which ended up delaying the KGB cell whilst they sought updated instructions
- Meanwhile, Tactical Assault Group East (which in the mobilised circumstances would still be present, but likely made up of reserve Commandos) attack the residence in a joint operation with the SPG and AFP
- The AFP are very, very, very disappointed that they did not get the opportunity to question the cell, as they were killed in (insert very heavy firepower reference) the process
- Thus, due to the Aussies having their blood up, a bit of time elapses before they realise that they made a bit of an understandable oopsie, and the Sovs managed to get the word out before being sent to meet Lenin

Thus, with a couple of changed sentences and a bit of juggling, it could work, should there be a desire to tweak it in this way.

I think it's important to remember that we know this was the real cell. I have no doubt that at the time they were going in the strike force will not have known this - they will have been told that information has been received that the people in the house are maybe up to something, and they are being sent to take them in. Because if the nature of the war, they will be aware that there are Spetznaz/similar out there (hence the use of significant force) but they won't be aware that this particular target might be. And there will be dozens of similar raids happening in parallel because the entire intelligence apparatus got hit very hard and they'll be pushing hard to round up what they can with what they have - a recipe for poor signal:noise ratio in their information.

So the scenario is that a number of raids are going in, and due to good tradecraft on the part of the Soviets this isn't considered a particularly likely target so given to the Police rather than the armed forces.

It also needs to be remembered that the Tier 1 SF troops who would handle this sort of thing in peacetime have their own very important war role to carry out so the choice is probably either Police, Line Infantry or Reservists.

On the first point, given the situation, 'take them out' is more likely than 'take them in'. If we make the utterly unprecedented Canberra attack canonical, as has been done here, then all of the consequences will subsequently reverberate 'downstream' in the story, perhaps in some unexpected and suboptimal ways.

On the second, I refer you to the above. 20.000 Australians lie smouldering in Canberra, and there will be the better part of 20,000 Standby Reservists in Sydney alone, all called up prior to the war kicking off. There are 15,000 cops in NSW across the whole state...and quite a few of them will be in Canberra aiding rescue, recovery and order operations. That translates to maybe 9000 in Sydney, and the NSW Tactical Operations Group is going to be stretched even before Canberra with protection duties. What makes the ADF more likely is the unique confluence of a few different circumstances, including the running mobilisation from Timor onwards.

On the third, that is exactly what I wrote. TAG (East) being made up of reserve Commandos.

I do think that the broader Australian Army (pre-mobilisation) orbat might need a bit of a spring clean to factor in what has occurred; naming units left out currently; and channeling some unit history.

[Bernard Woolley]

If Wiki is to be believed, he was a Lieutenant Commander, then became a Commander in he final episode.

IIRC, Bernard made him a captain.

I went digging to check. He's mentioned as a Captain in Ch.203.

When I wrote that the reboot didn’t exist. Since both reboot series explicitly exist in the same universe and have had multiple cross-overs, it made sense to me to retcon the appearance of Magnum to be the reboot version.

[Bernard Woolley]

Refresh my memory, please. The Soviet defector is the one from the airliner that diverted to Diego Garcia?

The airliner that diverted to D-G had the origional escorts to the defector onboard. They were acting as decoys while the defector went via Australia.

It doesn't really follow. They aren't going to arrest them, but go in with a fair bit of blood up, with overt military force. Less of a quiet knock on the door a la Osama and more of how Uday and Qusay met their ends. It might be counterproductive in intelligence terms, but this is the first opportunity to kill literal commies since the Canberra atrocity.

That's a fair point. However, the authorities don't really want to also kill a bunch of Sydney residents in a densely populated part of the city.

Besides this, there isn't going to be scope for a sleeper cell to have a go in public.

Moscow Centre strongly disapaproves of your defeatism. Find a way.

Whoo-hoo! Great chapter, and BZ, my friend. Always glad to help out, and so to business:

Thanks very much for both the comments and help.

The Swiss have to be looking the other way with this deal.. Not that anyone's complaining as yet.

The Swiss are not doing any more than they did during the Second World War. They supplied weapons and bomb sights, for example, to the WAllies. I love the fact that they were shipped via fascist Italy to waiting ships of the Swiss merchant navy.