Talk:Technical (fighting vehicle)

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[edit] Iraqi Use

Someone need to update the entry for technical with the new info about the wide use of technicals by the fedayeen in the Iraq campaign of 2003.

Updated as requested. --Petercorless 18:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tachanka and other precursors to the modern technical

Also, a comparison with the horse-driven Russian tachanka contraption of the Civil war period (1917-1920s) would be interesting, especially in terms of military tactics and the dual use (civil and military). --Unsigned

More directly, I made a comparison to the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). --Petercorless 18:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reinstated "Gun-vee"

Petercorless, your insistence on keeping the term Gun-vee is just plain wrong. Crew served weapons mounted atop Humvees have been in use for as long as the Humvee has existed. This was not a response to the insurgency as you claim but rather standard procedure. This is a clear case of someone trying to invent a term and using wikipedia to bolster their claims, therefore its getting deleted again. No one argues keeping it except for you, take a hint. --MattHunter 01:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Please do not delete the entry on the US creation of improvised "technicals" in Iraq without discussion. If you have objections, please add your concerns here. --Petercorless 21:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I again reinstated the quote about "Gun-vees" and also put back in the blockquote text for Jed Babbin. Please do not vandalize! --Petercorless 02:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I removed it without reading this. Could you please explain who exactly uses the term ‘gun-vee’ outside of a handful of image captions and the article?
As for Babbin, well… I called the quote stupid and I stand by that. It makes as much sense as saying that an M1A1 is a really lousy match against the Kirov, i. e. it’s technically true, fairly indisputable and looks relevant, but has absolutely no practical influence on the subject matter (a tank does not fight battlecruisers and a technical does not fight MBTs or fighter-bombers). —xyzzyn 05:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Gunvee: Apparently the troops themselves, as in this quote: "I worked out of Mosul, but I've seen Iraq from Tikrit up to Dahuk near Turkey. In that time, I did 95% of it in a two gunvee six man convoy." [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1248016/posts]
As for the point regarding them not being able to stand up against tanks, it was also to illustrate their weakness, as was also recently displayed in the Somali war, where they were toasted by T-55s. In comparison to the Libya-Chad War, where they did rather well. This was to illustrate how, if they had tactical initiative and surprise, they could do well if they had sufficient AT assets. But when on the defensive, and without sufficient AT assets (ATGMs, air power, etc.), they did not fare well. In this case, MBTs did and do and will fight technicals. This was to show the 'scissors-paper-rock' fortes and foibles of their deployment vs. other weapon systems.
Again, please STOP vandalizing my posts without first discussing the merits of the entries here. --Petercorless 08:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
That quote is one of 19 hits for ‘gunvee’ (excepting those related to some guy on eBay). There are some more hits for ‘gun-vee’, but less than 100 total relevant hits. The term has practically no web presence; does it appear anywhere in print? (Wikipedia does document some military jargon, but this term doesn’t seem to have the kind of cultural importance it would take to put it into any kind of context.)
As for weaknesses, maybe you would like to compare them to nukes, as well? It’s trivial that for almost any weapon or vehicle there is a superior weapon or vehicle. It makes sense to document the exceptions, but not vice versa. If you can write about specific tactics and countermeasures, you should definitely do so (maybe making the one paragraph in the introduction dealing with this matter a separate section). That’s where actual examples would be useful. However, ‘let’s aimlessly rush expendable people and materiel to be slaughtered so the enemy is delayed by a day’ is not a tactic (at least not one specific to technicals) and putting Babbin’s comparison into the article falsely suggests the opposite.
If the Iraqis had had decent (or, for that matter, any) air support against American tanks, that would still be an issue for aviation and tank articles rather than this one. Unless, of course, they would have used some kind of tactic specific to technicals, like driving up to the Abraham Lincoln and firing MANPADS at its aircraft. ;)
By the way, please check WP:-( for a definition of vandalism… I hope you’ll find that my (so far single) edit to the article does not meet those criteria. —xyzzyn 21:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I do apologize about misconstruing your efforts as vandalism. Let's try to talk through issues.
1. "Technicals" are, by their nature, a term of slang/jargon. Manufacturers do not generally "build" technicals off an assembly line. They are cobbled together. The origin of the term itself was slang/jargon. So refutations based on the dismissal of slang/jargon are irrelevant since we are documenting a term of military slang/jargon in the first place.
2. The term "Gunvee" and the article citation was to demonstrate US troops were cobbling together their own technicals in Iraq, and/or referring to their HMMWV Armament Carriers as such. Just as the term "battlewagon," "gunwagon," or "gunship," were cited as synonyms. To prejudice this term by deleting it was prejudicial.
3. The section has been deleted more than once without discussion.
4. The "technical vs. tank" debate merited discussion of tactics, as it was a held belief technicals + ATGMs could defeat a tank force after the Battle of Fada, and irregular forces could stand up against conventional forces after the Battle of Mogadishu, but these beliefs were repudiated in OIF and recently Somalia. The issue was one of generational warfare, 3rd generation vs. 4th generation. It would be akin to a discussion of infantry with gunpowder weapons vs. armored knights. I do not care to discuss an entire matrix of comparisons. The comparison of a technical to a nuclear bomb is ludicrous, hyperbolic and reductio ad absurdum.
5. I cited the reasoning of Saddam's adoption of their use specifically after the release of the movie "Black Hawk Down." If you want, I can also cite the congressional testimony by a general if need be. Why this element of discussion was deleted was never explained.
6. I cited a quote from the movie Road Warrior (the documentary of Mogadishu) to illustrate their tactical use, but that too was deleted. --Petercorless 22:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
There are jargon terms worth documenting, and there’s the rest. As the article itself shows, the term ‘technical’ is used fairly frequently. I have not bothered to check whether this is the case for the other terms. I did check ‘gunvee’ and it is not nearly as wide-spread, or wide-spread at all. I do not doubt that some people use it, but I don’t see any residual effect from that use (and what Wikipedia documents is, effectively, written stuff, not spoken jargon).
I have made a clarification to show that a design-by-purpose armament carrier is not technically a "technical." --Petercorless 07:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Then it technically doesn't below in this article then does it? Also your term Gun-vee is supported by no one but yourself and one photo caption therefor not widespread use, thus Gunvee segment is getting deleted again here and on the HMMWV article --MattHunter 18:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tactics, use in Iraq separate arguments from "Gunvee"

Regarding the technical+ATGM belief, go ahead and put it in the article with proper references. However, I don’t see how the wider issue of irregular warfare fits in here. As for the reason why the Iraqis used technicals, you didn’t cite it. You cited somebody mentioning a story in an interview, but this only established the existence of the anecdote, not its factuality. (And even if it’s true, it still lacks information. Who made the decision? Which branches of the military actually used technicals?) If the general you mentioned was more specific, then his testimony is a better citation. —xyzzyn 23:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

You're starting to argue against the entire point of an article about "technicals" if you want to ignore the tactical reasons they exist in the first place. I did cite both the Republican Guard and Fedayeen used technicals. The decision was made by Saddam:

Did Saddam see Blackhawk Down? Yes, he did and, in fact, he liked the movie so much that he even went so far as to equip Fedayeen units with white SUVs and white pickups, trying to mimic the technicals that he thought were the reasons why the American forces left. --Scales, Maj. Gen. Robert Jr., USA, Ret., Former Commandant, Army War College, OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM: OPERATIONS AND RECONSTRUCTION, OCTOBER 21, 2003

And that contradicts the story from the other quote, where ‘Saddam’s two sons’ were reported to have made the decision. —xyzzyn 00:09, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citing sources

The basis for this article seems to be an article on a web site called Bellum.[1] Although the site generally looks good, its article about technicals has an empty "sources" section. It is not good enough to satisfy Wikipedia's requirements for citing sources—it is what Wikipedia refers to as a self-published source, which is not considered reliable or verifiable.

Let's find a better reference. —Michael Z. 2007-07-28 15:17 Z

[edit] suggested addition

the re should be a referance to the Ludlow_Massacre and the "death special"

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[edit] Combat history

The history of such improvised fighting vehicles stems back through the era of the automobile and the machine gun, and even earlier, to the horse-drawn tachanka of eastern Europe. During World War II, the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) were noted for their exploits in the deserts of Egypt, Libya and Chad on similar precursor vehicles. A popular American television series The Rat Patrol of the 1960s very clearly illustrated the use of Technical-style vehicles during WWII.

The term "technical" was fairly specific to African conflicts. While the idea may have been borrowed from the LRDG, I doubt tachankas had any influence on their use :) What was probably more influential were the thousands of HMG armed Jeeps sold into Africa after the Second World War, and no longer available by the 70s. I also don't know if the African revolutionaries were ardent watchers of The Rat Patrol for any tactical hint :) --mrg3105 (comms) ♠♥♦♣ 08:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)