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. . .I don't think we could actually reach each other.
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Makes power projection very tricky, that.
And I end up imagining JMSDF and RAN frigates waking people up somewhere in the Philippines with gun reports and explosions coming from out to sea.
The respective submarine forces might be the most lethal combatants. Collins-class boats seem to have all the range they need, being designed to operate throughout the I.O.
Or we're faced with the spectacle of each country's P-3 Orions (they'd have the range) popping at each other with aircrew pistols out of the pilots' windows. Determining the winners would have to be by decision, though... counting the bullet holes in the planes' skins. Quick, install some rails for Sidewinders.
But if either nation had to work up its own complete, blue-water navy, their likely urgent theaters of operations would be the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific, covering both the majority of their shipping traffic and their connection with the Persian Gulf oil states.