Brigadier Tim Radford, the head of British forces in Afghanistan, has said more helicopters and surveillance aircraft would make his troops "more tactically effective". But then, so would bulldozers - and they are considerably less expensive.

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The D9, 'low and slow', but I thought that term was usually applied to types of attack aircraft!

The diffence being that a D-9 could flatten an entire village on the amount of fuel it would take an attack aircraft to reach the runway threshold.

What we would do is dub Killdozer into Pashto and try and get the locals to watch it as a warning. Step out of line and we'll make them watch it again. I like the quote from Clint Walker's character - "Given time, it can make a road anywhere it wants to go."

If tanks can reach those areas of Helmand we can get CRARRVs or TROJANs there too. Not as engineering minded as a D9 and perhaps not as protected either but an option that ought to be available at least.


More environmentally friendly and less offensive*! Greenie points for the Army if they did it then. There is even an electric drive D7 that is more fuel efficient than the bog standard one.

* Unless you are General McCrystal where engineering is offensive and blowing shit up isn't.

As the D-9 trundles along the difficult terrain to the target, it can also push a great pile of rocks and dirt in front of its blade as additional protection. When deposited over and upon the enemy position, silence descends upon the area and the cleared path can truly be named the "Road to nowhere".

Job for the Vogons .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon

I find the images of these things pretty weird. People are tiny around them.

The IDF have another combat engineering vehicle that may suit the MoD better...

You mean this?

Yes. Minimal environmental impact, won't terrify civillians, easy to transport and probably quite cheap. For PR purposes just have them much closer to the camera than people and they'll look huge!

Fill the bucket with sweets and paint a smiley face on the front and you've got a winner.

I have watched the use of Dx series 'dozers in "combat" for a while now. My interest in these vehicles came from seeing daily the civilian models moving mountains. They are awesome.

The comment from the US officer is interesting. I have advocated/mentioned here the need to fit Mastiff with rollers and the use of discreet tracks to reduce ground pressure and increase the off road envelope to avoid natural choke-points.

History shows that British army "engineering effectiveness" had more effect on the empire than it "combat effectiveness" ever had. Another lesson lost on today's generals.

{We still need a towed rifled artillery piece to replace Javelin for attacking buildings....}

Now why do you keep censoring my supportive non abusive posts?
Isnt that what the 'authorities' are prone to do?
Its happened too many times to be healthy!
You been got at?

See reply on the other thread - we never laid a hand on them.

And talking of kit ... how about this? It would certainly straighten out a few roads.

It is capable of picking up a bulldozer in the buckets without noticing. And after the war is won, use it for it's intended function of strip mining. Very cunning. The British plans to steal the uranium, coal and other things are coming along nicely.