Free Republic

MOSSVILLE, Ill., Sept 21 (Reuters) - Mark Pflederer dreams of dancing bulldozers. Pflederer, the chief technology officer at heavy machinery maker Caterpillar Inc. (CAT.N: Quote, Profile, Research), believes that, within a few years, his company's earthmovers will be able to operate without drivers, spinning around each other on worksites like dancers in a robotic ballet choreographed by onboard computers and satellite-based navigation systems. "Ten or 15 years down the road," he says, "it's not too much of a stretch to think that we could run multiple bulldozers, wheel loaders or trucks on a site and move the operators to a...

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...