Military Photo: D9 CAT Takes RPG Hit and Lives

Archives
Posted: 02/01/2005

Discussion Board on this Photo

In early 2003, the U.S. bought nine 62 ton D9 armored Caterpillar bulldozers into Kuwait for the Iraq campaign. The D9s, and their Israeli made armor kit, were purchased because of the Israeli success with the dozen in urban warfare against Palestinian terrorists. America had used the D9 during the 1960s in Vietnam, but after that only used the smaller (35 ton, with armor kit) D7. The D9 was not needed for urban fighting in Iraq during 2003, but was found very useful (much more so than the smaller D7) for combat engineering tasks. The D9 quickly cleared highways of debris and built temporary roads for combat vehicles. One D9 was thought to be as useful as four D7s, and there is a lot of enthusiasm among combat engineers to keep the D9s, and get more of them. In 2004, the D9s were used for combat operations in places like Fallujah.
Photos by LTC Norm Root

The following pictures show a D9 CAT like the one above that took a hit from an RPG.



More Photos
1 | 2 | 3

Photo Archive

Military Photo Archives: Current  2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004

X

ad

Help Keep Us From Drying Up

We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling.

Each month we count on your contribute. You can support us in the following ways:

  1. Make sure you spread the word about us. Two ways to do that are to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
  2. Subscribe to our daily newsletter. We’ll send the news to your email box, and you don’t have to come to the site unless you want to read columns or see photos.
  3. You can contribute to the health of StrategyPage.
Subscribe   contribute   Close