All the faces in the back have no nose! Cool photo though.

Noses are in violation of Japanese censorship laws.

What's the uniform of the guy on the left? JGSDF?

that is a JGSDF officer, yes.

(nods) Gotcha.

Hey if you went to a JGSDF base did you get any pictures of Kiryu or Maser cannons ?

GMTA. See my comment on the "ride a tank" pic.

i like a lot that mini tank X3

You probably have the interest of all the fans of Dominion Tank Police out there.

A tank like that would be good for waging war against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, given that the only protection issue (attacks with shaped charges) is solved with applique armor.
Other than that, this vehicle is small and light, and could get into all sorts of places that would be VERY inconvenient to an enemy without anti-tank guns. Ammunition for that small main gun would be both plentiful and cheap --- both good assets for use against a foe whose strategy is to dupe us into bankruptcy.

Not that I'd want to drive around in this vehicle during a mobile war, mind you...

Wouldn't want to put that sheet metal and those rivets up against modern explosives and modern HMG ammunition, though. I doubt this could have reliably bounced .50 or twelve-seven in its heyday, and there's a reason we don't use riveting on armor applications anymore...

Still, there IS something to your comments about the utility of a light tankette in urban warfare. Unfortunately if the fighting gets heavy enough to require armored vehicles, it often is heavy enough to require heavily armored vehicles. Something of a slender niche there where you'd want this rather than a sturmgeschutze-type or a real tank with the ability to 'bring the house down'.

Point taken.

Perhaps something more like these would be in order;

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b.....AI/AAI-pg1.jpg

http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchan.....r/tankita.html

http://www.combatreform2.com/futuretank.jpg

Interesting. Hadn't seen the Tankita page although the concept is hardly new. The 'futuretank' is pretty plainly a hetzer-derivative. Have you seen any of the P-10 white paper stopgap tankette ideas from the end of WW2? barely room for two men, an engine, and an axial-mount 105...But designed to go anywhere a mid-sized car could, and low enough to hide behind hedges and fences. Evil little ambush tankettes. The problem with that sort of thing is elevation. Put them in a city and sooner or later you will be dealing with RPGs fired from the fourth or fifth floor. Bad enough that top armor is usually weakest without having to add the irritation of not being able to shoot back due to only twelve degrees of elevation (like the infamous Stridsvagn 103).

The top of an assault gun shouldn't be too difficult to cover with applique armor and/or ERA, considering that it's roof will inevitably have lots of unused space.

As for the issue of gun elevation, observe the experimental "Cleft Turret" tested on the M2 Bradley in the 1980's; http://www.jedsite.info/fulltrack-b.....ast-intro.html

A similar implement on an assault gun would allow for extremely high gun elevation.
Gun depression, however, is another matter. Independent, variable-height, front and rear suspensions would help a lot, but I'm not sure if they would be enough.

Well, recall, these tanks were used mostly against people who had no tanks at all. They came out second-best against even US light tanks.

I'm aware. I was referencing BF's comment that we need something like this for COIN in places like Afghanistan/Iraq.

With what I read and saw in documentaries on tank history, most Japanese tankettes were nasty to US marines only armed with .30 cal weapons. Things evened out when they ran up against heavy weapon teams, and .50BMG and 37mm cannon finally saw their first and last uses in their originally designed roles, -as anti-tank weapons for thin armor from ground level.
(.50 did a bang-up job the entire war from the air in tank killing. Engines and roofs were very thinly armored.. ;)
Flame throwers and hand grenades were effective as well, and the Sherman tank... The Sherman did to tankettes what German Panthers and Tigers did to Shermans in Europe.
It would be interesting to see what applique armor could do for a tankette vs. .50 BMG or soviet 14.5mm heavy machine gun. They might need to be wrapped in a cage vs. RPGs like Stryker vehicles are...

These mini-tanks gave us (The Republic of China, the RED WHITE BLUE one, not the Commie Red) plenty of trouble in WW2 since the technology of anti-tank weaponry weren't available to us until 1943 and later. Imagine trying to get sticky bombs onto these fast moving tin-cans. As you mentioned, it'd be harder for the defenders (Republic of China) to put pak-36 (or something along the line) in place due to issues such as radio technology and telegram (Mind you, Japanese had air superiority and that put a major dent in our communication and command).

git the japs! lol.. j/k cool stuff

They did an excellent job on restoring this.

Amazing! I did not think there would be enough left of any tanks of that era to restore after "Shogun MacArthur" got done with demobilizing post-war Japan. Thank you for sharing the pics.

A lot of the little Japanese tanks got left behind in various places when they ran out of fuel, parts or ammo. In fact not too long ago, construction teams excavating a hillside on one of the Pacific islands uncovered a whole tank-park of them. Unlike small stuff that gets carried off or sold, big things like tanks and aircraft often are just abandoned-in-place and forgotten.

Bonaparte from Dominion Tank Police! Wow, that cosplaying actor looks very noble. Great photo!

This is awesome.

Wow, nice to see a great restoration like this, and of course, Shep is in Osaka and missed it...Little tanks like these, were, if I recall, more like infantry support than like the western heavy tanks, "roll through and occupy" mission.
I have a shell and casing for one of these small Japanese 37mm main guns.

The only time I've ever seen on of those tanks was at the Nethlands National Miliary Musium in Deft, it was painted in a camo pattern, and it looker like a toy too..

Thank you for the very interesting 3 photos!

Wow. Now I know where the inspiration for Metal Slug came from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGTZLuuTPi8 always a pleasure RIP ROY