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.
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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).
400 Houthi aerial drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles were fired at/near USN ships since Oct 2023
120 SM-2 & 80 SM-6 missiles, 160 five-inch main guns rounds, plus a combined 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow and SM-3 missiles engaged them.
Drone War Cost Trades 🧵 1/
Tyler Rogoway has reported the following missile costs:
SM-2 Block IIIC - $2,530,000 per missile.
SM-6 - $4,270,000 per missile.
Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) RIM-162 Block II - $1,490,000 per missile.
SM-3 -$12,510,000 for the Block IB, and $28,700,000 for the Block IIA 2/
So:
120 SM-2 * $2.53 million = $303.6 million
80 SM-6 * $4.27 million = $341.6 million
12 ESSM (guess) = $17.88 million
6 SM-3 IB (guess) * $12.51 million = $75 million
2 SM-3 IIA (guess) * $28.7 million = $57.4 million
The fire and forget millimeter wave (MMW) radar guidance AGM-114L "Hellfire Longbow" being referred in the War Zone post as "a new anti-drone armament" for the LCS actually ceased production in 2005 and reaches end of life in 2025.
One of the reasons the AGM-114L was dropped from the US Army M-Shorad is the US Army didn't want to pay money to recertify the AGM-114L inventory...
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...with the AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) equipped with dual-mode Semi-Active Laser (SAL) and millimeter wave (MMW) radar seeker just entering production.
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The process was invented by a Russian, Via wikipedia:
"The Russian chemist Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev was the first to polymerize butadiene in 1910....
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...In 1926 he invented a process for manufacturing butadiene from ethanol, and in 1928, developed a method for producing polybutadiene using sodium as a catalyst.
The government of the Soviet Union strove to use polybutadiene as an alternative to natural rubber ...
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