Gun Trucks

[Top-Break]

The term "Technical" actually has nothing to do with armor, or the lack thereof.

During the Somali famine, but before US intervention, relief groups and news crews were extorted/persuaded to hire local toughs for protection. Back in the 1990s it was not a good idea to have mercenaries and protection payments on ones balance sheet, so the mercs/militiamen were dubbed "technical staff". The name stuck.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Top-Break

The term "Technical" actually has nothing to do with armor, or the lack thereof.

During the Somali famine, but before US intervention, relief groups and news crews were extorted/persuaded to hire local toughs for protection. Back in the 1990s it was not a good idea to have mercenaries and protection payments on ones balance sheet, so the mercs/militiamen were dubbed "technical staff". The name stuck.

Interesting tidbit. Thanks, Top.

[Webstral]

Top, thanks for posting that piece. I had no idea. It's interesting where names come from.

Army SGT, thanks for all those great images. Sigh. This is another one of those forehead slapping moments for me. Why haven't I given more thought to gun trucks in CONUS (everywhere, really) in 2000? They ought to be darned well ubiquitous. All one needs is a truck, some steel plating for armor, a means to attach the plating, and some weapons to mount on the truck. Duh. Even the light divisions ought to have a number of these, so long as fuel exists and the truck can be kept in repair.

I'm seriously thinking that I need to revisit all of my TO&E to account for gun trucks. The matter of gun trucks begs the question of priorities. If one has an M60, does it belong on a gun truck or with a platoon of dismounts? Heavier weapons, like the M2HB, almost certainly have to be mounted on a vehicle. Of course, machine guns aren't exactly as common as hunting rifles. Only so many are going to be confronted with this choice. Still, when I think about the Vermont State Guard and the Granite Brigade (NH), these are organizations with access to cargo trucks, homemade armor, and machine guns. Do the M60s and 60mm mortars go on trucks or with the dismounts?

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Army SGT, thanks for all those great images.


I'm seriously thinking that I need to revisit all of my TO&E to account for gun trucks. The matter of gun trucks begs the question of priorities. If one has an M60, does it belong on a gun truck or with a platoon of dismounts? Heavier weapons, like the M2HB, almost certainly have to be mounted on a vehicle. Of course, machine guns aren't exactly as common as hunting rifles. Only so many are going to be confronted with this choice. Still, when I think about the Vermont State Guard and the Granite Brigade (NH), these are organizations with access to cargo trucks, homemade armor, and machine guns. Do the M60s and 60mm mortars go on trucks or with the dismounts?

Your welcome,

Gun trucks serve two purposes.

For Convoys they bring often overwhelming fire power to a convoy. Making a convoy to dangerous to attack. This fire power can travel with and at the same speed as the convoy.

Heavy Weapons platform. The accompany dismounts or support base defense. They use the longer range of the heavy weapons to keep away from enemy dismounts while bring direct fire and indirect fire in support of their own.

[ArmySGT.]

In Tw2k your likely to use captured enemy wagons for gun trucks. If you lose one......... meh. While desperately using your own that you do have parts for as haulers.

[Webstral]

It would be hard to overstate the value of armored fire support vehicles in CONUS in 2000/2001. Really, in any location in the world in which the local bandits and warlords don't have access to heavy weapons, a gun truck would play a key role in enabling government troops to assault marauder and warlord strongholds. By the same token, functional gun trucks would enable those who would be law unto themselves to overcome the defenses of lightly armed militias.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Webstral

If one has an M60, does it belong on a gun truck or with a platoon of dismounts? Heavier weapons, like the M2HB, almost certainly have to be mounted on a vehicle. Of course, machine guns aren't exactly as common as hunting rifles. Only so many are going to be confronted with this choice. Still, when I think about the Vermont State Guard and the Granite Brigade (NH), these are organizations with access to cargo trucks, homemade armor, and machine guns. Do the M60s and 60mm mortars go on trucks or with the dismounts?

A couple of the color plates in the Osprey book show M60Ds (helicoper door guns with spade grips and ring sights intead of a butt-stock and a pistol grip) mounted on gun trucks. It seems to me that, with very few aircraft still airworthy, this would be a natural use for old door guns.

It's almost ridiculous how many MGs some of those Vietnam-era gun trucks carried. We're talking 3-5 M2HBs and 2-4 M-60s per truck, in some instances. One even had two 7.62mm Miniguns! Most of them carried an M-79 too. I was surprised that none of the images in the book show AGLs as a gun truck weapon. I know that they were widely used on PBRs by the Brown Water Navy. I wonder why they never caught on as gun truck weapons.

[Legbreaker]

Coax machineguns from knocked out AFVs would be useful on trucks also. The added bulk of makeshift butts and trigger mechanisms wouldn't matter that much when mounted.
You might also see coax weapons on tripods and used as SFMG in the indirect role. It's possible they could even be used on trolleys - imagine a pram reworked to carry a machinegun instead of a baby....

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by Raellus

A couple of the color plates in the Osprey book show M60Ds (helicoper door guns with spade grips and ring sights intead of a butt-stock and a pistol grip) mounted on gun trucks. It seems to me that, with very few aircraft still airworthy, this would be a natural use for old door guns.

It's almost ridiculous how many MGs some of those Vietnam-era gun trucks carried. We're talking 3-5 M2HBs and 2-4 M-60s per truck, in some instances. One even had two 7.62mm Miniguns! Most of them carried an M-79 too. I was surprised that none of the images in the book show AGLs as a gun truck weapon. I know that they were widely used on PBRs by the Brown Water Navy. I wonder why they never caught on as gun truck weapons.

Speaking for the Vietnam-era AGLs, it was an experimental Honeywell design that was hand-cranked. The first real AGL is the XM-174 by Aerojet. Both designs used either a 12rd drum or a 50rd box and fired standard 40mm grenades (the barrel on the XM-174 is the same one fitted to a M-79).

GIs also took the time to strip any crashed gunships and stripped them of their M-75 40mm (Cobra) and the M-5 40mm (UH-1 gunships).

There is a photo in the national archieves that shows one gun truck fitted with no less than six 40mm AGLs!

There are also pics of twin M-60 mounts mounted on each corner of the truck bed.

Another favorite mounted on some gun trucks was the E8 35mm 16-tube CS gas grenade launcher, I've seen at least three pics that shows at least two of these units mounted.

If you have a chance to check out a copy of Shelby's Vietnam Order of Battle (pg 303), there is an great pic of a M-151 jeep, protected by sandbags and armed with a M-134 7.62mm minigun for the passenger and a Honeywell handcranked GL on a pedestal mount!

[95th Rifleman]

Re-purposing aviation weapons is the logical choice for things like gun trucks and static positions aswell. On Okinawa the japanese did the same with MG's taken from wrecked aircraft.

In a game I ran the group rigged up 27mm Tornado cannons to defend a German airfield from marauders.

[bobcat]

anti aircraft guns are also good for gun trucks. in iraq one of the local militias had a russian 37mm twin barrel AA gun mounted on the back of a bongo truck.

i wonder if one could mount a 25mm bushmaster from a bradley?

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Do the M60s and 60mm mortars go on trucks or with the dismounts?

A quick WWII reference: some US units used Willy's jeeps fitted with 60mm mortars in the bed. They could be fired from there are dismounted. If the light jeep could safely fire a 60mm from it's bed, I'd say just about any military four+ wheel vehicles (and some civilian ones) could as well.

(at most you might need a single layer of sandbags under the mortar to absorb the recoil and protect the body).