This is a short thread on Japanese bulldozers in WW2.
There weren't many & they were small
My copy of Rikugun. Volume 2: Weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army & Navy Ground Forces 1937 - 1945 does not show a single Japanese bulldozer design. 1/
There are a few hints about them on the internet.
In December 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Komatsu to produce heavy earthmovers for the purpose of building air bases.
Even a "small" American D-4 Caterpillar tractor with bulldozer blade was massing 10 tons.
4/
The Imperial Japanese Navy's Komatsu bulldozer was slightly more, mass-wise, at 5,000 kg than a Caterpillar D-2 at 7,420 to 8,536 pounds (3,366 to 3,872 kg).
The problem with this thought is the Iranian drones being fired now are the uber sophisticated Russian-guilt Geran using radio mesh and cell phone sim card link video-navigation.
They are flying lower and more sophisticated trajectories taking advantage of radar shadows from oil infrastructure in the Gulf to prevent the generation of good intercept tracks.
Gun armed ships and attack helicopters low amongst oil rigs are the best play here.
2/3
It is only a matter of time until Geran/Shaheed FPV motherships are being fired by the IRGC at Gulf Oil infrastructure using Gulf Cell phone networks as video data links.
This is a point I have been pounding upon since 2023.
The "Big/Expensive/Few Mafia" in the US Flag ranks and Western Defense Contractors have denied this harsh reality for reasons Upton Sinclair has expounded upon. 1/
Both I and @johnkonrad were mocked for pointing out how deadly drones were for being disintermediated from existing military platforms for ubiquitous commercial transportation infrastructure like cargo containers. 2/
The Ukrainian Operation Spiderweb showed who were prophets and who were the complete and utter fools.
BLUF:
The Big/Expensive/Few, love the F-35, fanboy community got to eat 💩
Very, Very, few people understand the implications of this Israeli hack combined with its deep penetration of Iran's Regime means for the US-Israeli campaign to exterminate the Mullah's Regime Security Forces.
Let's talk about Gorgon's Stare & Post GWOT smart bombs🧵 1/
Gorgon's Stare and its peer systems like ARGUS, Vigilant Stare, Constant Hawk and Agile Condor are Wide Area Aerial Surveillance (WAAS) systems, the all-seeing eye in the sky.
They are increasingly sophisticated mergers of multi-spectral cameras, computer data bases and more recently A.I.
2/
WAAS has had a rocky and politically charged history (See 2011 text below) but the data fusion technology has gotten to the point that more and more cameras can be networked together over larger areas with the data saved for later analysis.
I don't doubt that Ukraine cyber hacked in Russian digital terrain elevation maps that the Russians compiled for themselves. Up to date digital terrain elevation maps are a good thing to have.
Plus NASA also had a huge archive of digital terrain elevation data.