Rule out nuclear war
Rule out outside help from the UK and the US


Who would win if AU and Indonesia went into a conventional war ??

Let's be reminded that Indonesia has more military power in every sense.

And also that Indonesia's military is ranked as the 14th most powerful in the world and Australia is only ranked 26th...


Have your say...

If only you could "rule out" certain things that make war;war.

Thats like saying "if the dallas cowboys were playing the raiders, but dallas didnt have pads, or helmets, and used a soccer ball instead of a football, who would win?"

I dont know what the purpose of this thread was to begin with, but I think that whatever answer you will find, will be null and void to an actual eventhappening.

Australia and Indonesia wouldn't go to war either. They are big trading partners and have pretty good relations! Despite what many paranoid xenophobes in Australia might think, the two countries get along quite well with each other.

This is easy....Australia and their secret exploding Koala Bears would route the Indonesia forces.

Both countries have McDonald's...
...no two countries who have McDonald's outlets have ever been in a military conflict.

Thats not true.. Argentina & the UK have been involved in a military conflict!

years ago I was told by someone that If ever Indonesia was to attack they would do so by shear numbers, driving themselves across to the central part of Australia from the top before splitting into three main formations to attack the left, right and forward flanks all the way to the coasts. This would also tie in not by nuclear but gas warfare by them.
I don't really think we would stand much chance in a defence by numbers, or taken by suprise.

There would be no chance Indonesia could beat us. We have greater technology and weapons than them, leading to greater co-ordination and technique. Not to mention our Navy and Airforce which would stalk the waters preventing the Indonesians from getting far.

There'd no doubt be other country(s) that would help too (hopefully), like the UK.

I'm not sure there would be a winner in the sense of the war ending quickly.

Australia has pretty weak force projection capability but Indonesia's is currently even worse.

Over time, Indonesia has become more of a 'threat' as they acquire submarines and more advanced Russian aircraft which is occurring at the same time as Australia is experiencing or soon to experience block obsolescence with most of our major military hardware.

We also have a problem in that our current submarines seem to be inoperational most of the time and the replacement force we are looking at (which would clearly re-establish our maritime superiority in no uncertain terms) is very expensive, a long way off and there are no off the shelf non-nuclear solutions that we can quickly buy in. The F35 fiasco has also left us in limbo.

But as others have indicated, Indonesia's main problem is the air-sea gap. Their navy is still weak and their armed forces are largely unprofessional and/or not well equipped and focussed on suppression of domestic unrest rather than fighting invasion wars overseas. Any idea they could land thousands let alone hundreds of thousands of troops is unlikely, not to mention the logistics of covering thousands of kms of desert to reach major population centres.

In terms of the political situation, your scenario is also unlikely (aside from the very likely intervention of the US and the UK - their investments in Australia are extraordinarily large) because Australia and Indonesia are in some ways allied in concern about potential Chinese power in years to come. Relations between the two countries are probably better now than they ever were, helped especially by them having some decent men as leaders these days.

Indonesia wouldn't have a chance against Australia.....sheer numbers dont mean much when attacking a country such as Australia.....

Japan itself admited it had no plans on Invading Australia as they knew their logistical capabilties, even as string as they were at the time would not have been enough...the japanese struggled eve getting to Malaysia...let along across one of the harshest continents on earth.

Indonesia, even thou having a huge army and all muslim, they have many differences amongst themselves.......they couldnt organise a piss up at a pub!

Australia, thou it will never be admitted is already part of the defence missile shield program the US is setting up around the world with its allies.....we have a much higher technology in use than the indonesians do, and Ive heard from many sources that should a nation ever seriously threaten australia, we would wipe them off the map....now I dont know if that means bio, chemical or nuclear, but i wouldnt say we dont have any of that.........

Australia is armed to the teeth....with a small, but very effective defence force......

dont discount us because of our small population.

Australia would be in defense as they have no desire to infiltrate Indonesia. Indonesia does have desire to dominate and take territory in Australia. Could they accomplish that? Yep.

Any invader soming in from Australia's north will find their biggest battle is with the country itself

Logistical nightmare with supply lines stretching for 1000s of km of barren desert and not much in the way of roads to travel over.