The Legendary, Lethal Technical
(Image above from keymilitary.com)
Early on in Trail of the Jaguar, Clayton introduces his 70-Series Toyota Land Cruiser pickup, a non-US model he imported under the federal rule that lets a private citizen import nearly any vehicle as long as it is over 25 years old. It would have looked something like this one, owned by Andy Shaffer:
My wife, Roseann, and I used this rule to import the 1993 Land Cruiser Troop Carrier in which we explored Australia and Tasmania and then southern Africa.
Clayton then mentions the “Technical”— a pickup such as his converted into a mobile platform for a heavy machine gun, or even a recoilless rifle or anti-aircraft weapon. The term came about in the 1990s when non-government agencies (NGOs) working in Somalia needed protection when working in dodgy areas. They hired locals, often members of militias, with pickups—virtually all of them either Land Cruisers or Hiluxes—usually equipped with pedestal-mounted Russian made DShK (“Dushka”) machines guns. Since this would be difficult to explain in budget reports to donors, the hired vehicles and men were described as “technical support”—and a legend was born.
The effectiveness of the technical was demonstrated during the last phase of the 1987 clash between Chad and Libya—in fact the conflict became known as the “Toyota War.” Chadian forces in technicals proved so mobile and deadly that they inflicted casualties on the Libyans at a ratio of seven to one.
The choice of Land Cruiser or Hilux pickup made sense, given the robust, fully boxed chassis of each, their unsurpassed reliability—and, of course, Toyota’s marketing and production juggernaut, which ensured that the remotest corners of the world had access not just to the vehicles, but parts as well.
The Technical went on to be used by dozens of insurgent groups, some of whose “armorers” seemed to be defying the laws of physics given the weapons they’ve mounted on their long-suffering Toyotas. Our own military has supplied technicals to militias on the “good guys’”side in several conflicts.
See also the Wikipedia entry, and tanks-encyclopedia.com.
