Torres Strait Anti Piracy Campaign

==Background==
After the Great War of 2077 and the subsequent collapse of the pre-war Australian government in 2093, shipping traffic along the Australian coast declined massively, but did not completely disappear, as many fishermen took to the seas in hopes of catching fish to survive. While the southeast coast of Australia was still controlled by the remnants of the pre-war government, by 2100 there was no real government in what was once Queensland beyond a few simply city-states that sprung up in the aftermath of the collapse, with much of the pre-war government and military presence being destroyed in nuclear attacks on cities such as Brisbane and Cairns. This state of lawlessness was further magnified at sea, with few of the city-states in the region having more than a few armed trawlers and other boats in terms of naval power. While they could defend the city with a few surviving pre-war artillery pieces, in the case of some city-states, a handful of surviving aircraft (mostly civilian light planes armed with machine guns and rockets), they lacked the forces to patrol the surrounding seas. As such, the area around the northern Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Strait became notorious for piracy. 
The pirates came for two primary sources, the first being former Australian, Torres Islander, or Papuan fishermen who found it simpler to steal the catch of other fishermen than the catch it themselves. As coastal trading ships become more common traveling the between the various city-states and the ports controlled by the rump government to the south, these vessels increasingly became prey as well. The increased trade also led to a second source of pirates, those who had been career criminals since before the Great War, including Australian gangs who had primarily been involved in narcotics trafficking before the war, as well as raskol gangs from former Papua New Guinea. The pirates in the region were in no way unified, and fighting between different gangs, often divided along lines of ethnicity, national origin, or former occupation- i.e. between former-fishermen and pre-war criminals. The attitudes of locals in the region to the pirates was variable, traders and fishermen in the area obviously regarded them as a menace, but some merchants in ports actually benefited from the pirates, providing a market for stolen goods, and would pay off pirate gangs not attack their ships. Some city-states and other factions even made agreements with pirates to provide a market for their loot in exchange for the pirates not attacking their ships. In other cases, however, pirates would aggressively attack small island settlements, stealing any loot and kidnapping residents as slaves. The residents of many small islands in the Torres Strait were forced to flee to Thursday Island and surrounding islands, the most populated of the islands, and only ones who had any real coastal defenses- the residents of Thursday Island, having formed an island-state known as the Torres Strait Republic having fitted a 19th century sea fort with a few pre-war artillery guns and heavy machine guns they had acquired.
==Early Operations==
The first engagements of the anti-piracy campaign took place on October 4th, 2119, when an CAS armed merchant ship, the CAS Nowra was attacked by a small flotilla of pirates in small boats north of Townsville. The pirate boats were quickly destroyed with 20mm cannon and machine gun fire. One of the captured survivors from the flotilla agreed to talk in exchange for a promise that he would not receive the death penalty, and informed the crew of the ship that the pirates were based at Lizard Island in the Great Barrier Reef. On October 6th, the Nowra, along with two new New Zealand-built Guardian-class corvettes arrived off the shore of Lizard Island and briefly shelled the pirate positions, before making a landing with a landing with a small party of 35 men, at which point the pirates surrendered with little resistance. 
On October 14th, a CAS pre-war missile boat and escorting boats, including armed trawlers from the city-states of Cairns, Townsville, and Cookville, destroyed a pirate flotilla including a dozen small boats and an armed trawler at Forbes Island and captured the pirate base on the island with only light resistance. Similar victories were scored through the month of October, with the arrival of the New Zealand fleet, including a second pre-war missile frigate and two missile boats, along with additional CAS assets effectively cleared the Barrier Reef Region of pirates by mid-November.
==Engagements in the Torres Strait==
New Zealand and Commonwealth of Australia Navy forces first entered the Torres Strait region on November 11th, 2119, making friendly contact with the Torres Strait Republic and thwarting a few attempted pirate attacks on Australian and New Zealand shipping. The first major engagement in the Strait would take place on November 22nd, 2119, when a joint New Zealand-Australian-New Brisbane flotilla centered around the pre-war missile corvette NZS Wellington, and also including four Guardian-class corvettes (two New Zealand and two Commonwealth of Australia), and two armed trawlers from the Union of New Brisbane and the coasts were attacked by a large pirate flotilla of over 40 light craft and 10 armed trawlers, centered around an armed ferry off of Masig Island. In response, the Wellington's escorts positioned themselves two kilometers north of the Wellington, acting as a screen against the fast-moving pirate boats, while the Wellington engaged at long-range of about six kilometers with its pre-war armaments. While anti-ship missiles were rare by this point in the postwar period, even with only its gun, the Wellington still proved far superior in combat to the pirate vessels, managing to score precise hits with its autoloading 76mm gun with intact pre-war targeting system, scoring crippling hits on six of the trawlers, sinking four of them outright, and the ferry before they could get into range of the screening force of Guardian-class corvettes and naval trawlers. In spite of the destruction of the trawlers, the pirate light craft persisted, and attempted to engage the defending pickets in a rapid attack.
==Operations in former-Papua New Guinea==