"Technicals"

[kato13]

nmdecke 01-24-2004, 01:36 PM Hi, just read this on a site, but it had no documentation and the site was kinda flaky. Could anyone confirm that such a thing could even happen. It regards the Libyan invasion of Chad in the mid 1980s...


"...By this time, however, also the Chadian Army - lead by the President Hissene Habre - now equipped with a large number of Toyota 4x4 pickups - on which such weapons like Milan ATGWs and flaks were mounted - was ready for an offensive towards north, and in late December several columns drowe into the northern Chad. Their first clash with Libyan forces followed on 2 January 1987, near Fada: during a short battle, a whole Libyan armored brigade was decimated: 784 Libyan troops were killed, 92 T-55 MBTs and 33 BMP-1 AFVs were destroyed, while 13 T-55s and 18 BMP-1s were captured and 81 Libyans were taken POW. All of this in exchange for 18 dead Chadian troops and three destroyed Toyota trucks!..."


Out in my garage I have a 1984 Toyota pickup...I'm wondering how insane I'd have to be to charge a T-55 with it. A stiff wind will blow my truck around like a kite, I can only imagine what the backblast of a Milan would do, especially if I was racing along a speed. Have any of you used any of these "technicals" in your games?

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orrin_ladd 01-24-2004, 03:05 PM Are you referring to this site?


http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_360.shtml


Yes, the "Toyota War" actually did happen. Here's some links:



http://www.fas.org/irp/dia/product/p...tory_1980.html


http://www.danielpipes.org/article/178


http://www.exploitz.com/Chad-Equipment-cg.php


They even made a wargame:


http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/8322


And a Steel Panthers scenario:


http://www.wargamer.com/gamesdepot/details.asp?sid=36


As for uses in T2k...gun trucks. The United States used them in Vietnam.


http://134.198.33.115/mvr/mvr.htm


http://guntruck.com/ACECamel.html


And they'd definately make a comeback in T2k, considering all the heavy equipment losses. Graebarde used some of them in his 8th ID oob.

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nmdecke 01-24-2004, 03:31 PM Ah, I see you are our expert on upgunned Toyotas...Thanks for the info, very interesting reading. Yes, it was the acig website, nice catch. I go out to the garage and start working on mounting a M2...

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orrin_ladd 01-24-2004, 03:43 PM No, I'm not the expert!


I just have too much time on my hands!

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kato13 01-24-2004, 07:51 PM Can someone point me to Graebarde's 8th ID oob (if it is public). I have done some searches on google, here, and in the yahoo groups, all to no avail.

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graebarde 02-09-2004, 07:52 AM sorry for the late response here, been off on a job in hell for the past few weeks and this is the first I have been to the town hall. My OOB is for the 5th Mech, but I have also gotten a OOB for the other divisions and the most of the XI Corps at my egroup. I can forward offlist to you (and others). Subject it 'Request for OOB' so I don't dump it by mistake.


In short our 'technicals' are guntrucks for the most part, centered around aviation and ada personnel, with weapons stripped off nonflyable gunships. They make up ONE 'battalion' in the reorganized division, which in the 5 ID have been dubbed the 'Mad Max' battalion.


grae

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dawg180 02-10-2004, 11:17 AM Do a search on Vietnam Gun Trucks, they are the closest thing to "official" technicals the U.S. Army has used.


Nothing like an M54 5 ton truck with a M55 quad .50 mount to tell the VC "no more ambushes!"




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graebarde 02-10-2004, 08:28 PM yeah the quad was a beehive but the one that really smoked was the 5 tonner with the miniguns...

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Ed the Coastie 02-15-2004, 12:56 PM Two occasions where I have encountered Technicals --


When I was in ROTC, our Battalion had a Technical that had been built as a project several years before. We maintained "Old Beastly" (named for a tank in a book by Jerry Pournelle) as a sort of mascot, and even took it on FTXs with us.



When we were equipping a newly-formed National Guard unit I belonged to about 10 years ago, we made a dozen or so Technicals and used them as quick-and-dirty scout vehicles to supplement our handful of Ferrets. (Don't ask.) As soon as we got our Bradleys, we phased out the Technicals and Ferrets and stored them in a Park Service equipment garage located in a remote corner of the Badlands. The last I heard, they were still there.

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dawg180 02-16-2004, 12:59 PM Jeez Ed, rumors of Ferret armored cars stored in a warehouse in the Badlands- sounds like a T2K adventure waiting to happen!

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TiggerCCW UK 02-17-2004, 05:22 PM Are these the standard British Army Ferrets? I wasn't aware that the US used those.

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Ed the Coastie 02-21-2004, 01:03 AM Yeah, they were standard Mark 2/3s. Most of them were picked up from private collectors and were in varying degrees of repair; of the rest, one was acquired courtesy of a police auction, one had been the property of a movie studio, and we didn't want to know (or ask) where the last one came from and why all the controls had been labeled in Spanish with masking tape and magic marker...


As for why they wound up in the Badlands...have you ever been to western North Dakota? It's miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles; you could literally lose an entire infantry division in the mesas and canyons of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. And it's not just Ferrets and Technicals in an isolated warehouse; one of the reasons that I came up with my "Badlands Showdown" scenario is that there is a LOT of "misplaced" military equipment floating around in North Dakota:

-- There are entire military bases (well, small ones, anyway) that are completely vacant except for a handful of caretakers and whichever local militia group happens to be squatting there.

-- Back in the 1980s, a militia group is reported to have stolen a half-dozen Stinger missiles and several M-16 rifles and hidden them somewhere near Bismarck; they have never been recovered.

-- When Garrison Dam was constructed on the Missouri River, the creation of Lake Sacajawea flooded and covered a number of small towns along the River valley. Rumor has it that one of the submerged towns contains a militia arsenal in a sealed concrete bunker accessible only through the use of SCUBA gear.


That's why we decided to store the vehicles in the Park Service garage...anyone who heard about them would consider it to be just another rumor! *LOL*


(As a side note, after I wrote my previous post I called my former CO and asked about the vehicles. He informed me that they are no longer in the garage; the entire collection had been transferred to Homeland Security last summer and were removed to another, undisclosed location.)

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AnotherSkip 02-21-2004, 11:48 AM Homeland Security


sounds like a T2K adventure in and of itself.....


Ahhh Technicals in Homeland Security I wonder what they would do with those.....


Sounds like a populace control item, why would they need those?


:Evil Grin:

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Mwolfe 02-23-2004, 09:41 AM relating to technicals.....


heres the viper

http://mediaserver.nauticom.net/www-...k-com/AUSA.wmv


and my favorite the raptor III :

http://www.saracen.org/


the raptor III is already used by secret service and homeland security..

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