T-55: The Insurgent's Friend

In Syria the FSA and some other rebel factions have acquired former Government tanks and according to Iran’s news channel Press TV (take this with a grain of salt) from Libyan arsenals supplied by the west. These mostly seem to be the venerable old T-55 which has been serving the needs of third world and smaller states for the better part of nearly 60 years. In Syria we’ve been seeing many videos of the rebels operating T-55s with varying degrees of effectiveness. Syria’s prewar armory was a mishmash of Soviet designs and anything else they could get their hands on, even ex-Wehrmacht Panzer IVs. Of course with Soviet support the T-55 and T-62 dominated the arsenal, with T-72 being delivered later on. This blog gives the figure for the T-55 as around 2250 with many in fixed static positions or, I assume, cannibalized for parts at some point. 

FAS Guide to the T-55

How the T-55 works

I’ve studied Soviet hardware since I was about five years old and the T-55 was always the hallmark of Soviet assistance. They had produced thousands upon thousands of them and throughout the 1960s the Soviet Army were more concerned with equipping themselves with the T-64 and later T-72 models. The T-55 was the bargain MBT handed out to client states. Even the Rhodesians acquired some though the South Africans intercepting a shipment meant for Uganda in the mid-1970s. The T-55 in its most effective form was after the IDF captured a whole bunch in the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars. The IDF, never known for being picky, upgraded their new tanks with American engines, electronics, guns and even an American style phone on the back so the infantry can talk to the tank commander. If you’ve seen The Beast, a movie set in Afghanistan early in the Soviet invasion, you have seen the IDF T-55. Dale Dye bought two of them for the production through contacts with the IDF. 

The IDF variant of the T-55 is the most interesting and, frankly, a good model for up and coming young insurgent tankers to look at. Soviet combat vehicles are not known for their reliability. The engine life on most the T-series MBTs are insanely short. The V-55 diesel only put out about 80 HP and was a direct descendent of a Soviet dirigible engine that, in 1928, was fairly powerful. By the mid-1950s it was distinctly underpowered and with poor quality control not even reliable.

Luckily for the modern owner of a T-55 there are upgrade packages available. Kharkiv Morozov Machine Building in the Ukraine, for example, offers an engine upgrade for the old T-55 with a multi-fuel power pack capable of something like 850hp. In addition other upgrades are available, including the main gun, electronics and co-axel machine guns. The company is specific that the upgrades can be completed in small workshops with basic lifting equipment, welding and metal cutting. If the specs listed are correct, the modified T-55 will have an across the board performance increase. You can buy T-55s for scrap prices, purchase an upgrade kit and hit up your dad’s garage for a week for a new tank. I wonder what the College Parking committee would say to that. 

 Upgrading your T-55

KMMB's Upgrade Ad

It goes to show that with upgrades the T-55 is still extremely useful for small wars. While it’s no match for Western MBTs it doesn’t really need to be. In a civil conflict, insurgent war or a conflict between two roughly matched opponents a couple of upgraded T-55s would be perfect. The continued use and upgrading of the T-55 also demonstrates how “westernized” our ideas of security are. Sane leaders and commanders realize that the M1A2 and Challenger 2 can annihilate any of their old Soviet tech without even turning off the air conditioner.  But they also know that the possibility of that occurring is remote for the most part unless they go Saddam Hussein or Serbia on somebody. 

For the missions those small states undertake regionally a reliable, upgraded T-55 is fine. In fact, I would argue that’s perfect.  In the west we tend to get caught up in technology and the continual sophistication of military equipment. None of this is needed in conflicts like what we are seeing in Syria and what we have seen in Libya and many other fights in and between small third world states. What IS needed is reliability, low-tech, and easy to maintain. That’s why I wrote this, I think the T-55 provides a good basis for such a beast and it provides a view outside of the western-centric ideal of a technology powered army in regions where high tech can be a hindrance.

Improvised Weapons, Insurgents and Kickstarting your own Army

Rebellions and insurgencies give rise to a wide array of innovative weapons. The lack of manufacturing capability often leads to some impressive improvised systems.  The famed Technical that was developed in the 1987 Chad-Libyan war is still one of the most popular of the improvised weapons systems. In Syria, Libya and many other more contemporary wars the Technical, which is a small truck of some make with a weapon mounted on the bed, exhibits a wide range of weapons adapted to it.  More advanced Technicals have a heavy machine gun on a pintle mount with gun shield and a seat for the gunner. Highly maneuverable and fairly easy to construct, Technicals are the basis for heavy weapons transport. In Syria the idea has been refined and upgraded a few times. 

Video: BMP-1  73mm Cannon mounted on a large flatbed delivery truck

                Salavged BMP-1 Cannon

 

Video: Syrian Rebel Flatbed Mortar Truck

                Mortar Truck

Video: Another view of the above system

               Mortar Truck #2

The mounting systems are often pretty ingenious as well, this picture of a series of Rebel propaganda photos showing the training of women has one manning a heavy machine gun, probably a Soviet 14.7mm KPV, with what looks like bicycle shock absorbers to cut on the recoil. 

The bigger flatbeds can carry correspondingly heavier ordnance, of course.  I wonder what the recoil does to the frame and suspension of both the smaller pick-ups and the larger flatbeds?  The recoil absorbing mechanisms are seen in quite a few videos and pictures leading me to believe that the effects of firing these weapons erode the vehicle after a while. In addition they would provide a more stable firing platform on a vehicle that was, in all likelihood, never designed to serve as weapons carrier. 

The Syrians have also made quite an industry of homemade mortars

Video:  165mm mortar

               165mm Mortar

Video: Another homemade system, probably 60-80mm in size.

60-80mm Mortar

Mortars are one of the best weapons for an insurgency. Cheap, easy to use and deadly effective in most terrain, mortars have been the infantryman’s friend since the American Civil War. While making them is not great technical achievement, making them safe and effective is. And it looks like the Syrians have done just that. 

 Libya during their fighting demonstrated much of the same ingenuity and improvisation (and it makes one wonder how many fighters in the Libyan conflict have migrated to Syria). This photo shows pretty well the Libyan rebels in all their glory, multiple Technicals with heavy machine guns and cannon plus what looks like a homemade rocket launcher on the vehicle closest to the camera. 

Here’s one of my favorite adaptations. The looting of Government arsenals produced a large number of weapon systems adapted for particular uses, like helicopter and strike aircraft mounted rocket pods. But, as the old saying goes, when you have lemons go ahead and made lemonade. I think that the rocket pod mounted on the Technical was a pretty fierce weapon, like a mini version of the Katyusha Rocket launcher made famous during the Second World War

The west concentrates on hi-technology systems, cutting edge weapons that are largely geared towards a conventional conflict with an enemy of roughly equal capability. Despite the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as other interventions such as Libya and Mali the most expensive weapons system deviate little from this path. The American F-35 JSF program and the new variant of the Nimitz class super carriers, the Gerald R. Ford, both represent the cutting edge of the western defense industry. These systems represent a substantial investment for America and its allies.

Can we make weapons cheaper? The rise of the maker culture in America (and elsewhere, especially Europe and Japan) could provide a source of inexpensive weapons systems, something that would be the western equivalent of the cobbled together Technicals in the third world.  Besides saving money on defense budgets what I see as the power of the maker could be harnessed to tackle what could be serious issues that came from Iraq/Afghanistan and future conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 

Could western militaries and defense industries take advantage of the maker culture? Could America develop a weapons system designed for small conflicts that would be effective and cheap? A crowd sourced defense project? The Technical and its ilk were built in haste for wars that are most often based on religion, tribal or ethnic beliefs. Taking whatever was available and easy to repair for a war that would necessarily limit the ability to acquire foreign weapons and equipment, the makers of the third world need to be innovative if they want to achieve their goals. Research and development is a luxury that western states can afford; the third world makes do but often in spectacular, innovative fashion. What can the west learn?

War isn't funny

War is not funny. Instead, I say it's hilarious. Who would say such a daft thing about an event that it nearly always utterly tragic? Because, as I tell my students, if you don't laugh you'll end up crying.

I am slowly putting together a database of small conflicts of varying types for a much larger project on defeat. This entails lots of small wars in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America. Many of these conflicts are fought on a decidedly small scale with less than 5000 combatants on either side and lots of old Soviet and American equipment. They're also deadly because most are not the result of state on state action but based on tribal, ethnic or religious loyalties. When a war is tribal/ethnic/religious in nature that's your ticket to the sort of black humor that forces you laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Take Libya-Chad, mid-1980s. For nearly 15 years Gaddafi was hard at work trying to make his Southern neighbor into a follower state. Chad was already in disarray from the civil strife that occurred when authoritarian leader Francois Tombalbaye's rather dictatorial handle on things ignited a series of attacks and coup attempts, leading to his assassination in the early '70s.Gaddafi has supported various northern factions with weapons deliveries and, eventually, direct intervention. Chad was, for Muammar, his chance to attain regional hegemony with his oil money. By the early 1980s any stability Libya had brought to Chad dissipated when Libyan Army units were withdrawn to the Aouzou strip, a patch of desert that Gaddafi had forced Chad to succeed. The coalition Government was left to its own devices to fight the former leader, Habre, and his group who had been exiled in Dafur. By 1986-87 Habre and his FAN had succeeded in re-conquering Southern Chad. Best of all, FAN and Habre were dedicated anti-Gaddafi fighters. Habre' then began to transform what had been a 15 year civil struggle into a war of unity against Libyan invaders. Using fast moving battle groups Harbe's FANT (Chadian National Armed Forces) systematically destroyed or forced the withdrawal of all Libyan bases in Northern Chad. Even better, they began to make attacks on airbases deep inside Southern Libya.

Libya-Chad is a gut-buster. Gaddafi rotated his support between several groups and ultimately finds them all united behind an anti-Libyan group that uses Libyan presence as a source of unity. You can't make this up. God, Gaddafi must have been pissed. Think of all that expensive Soviet hardware that was used against Libyan forces, the same hardware Gaddafi has supplied to Chad in the last seven or eight years. That's the best part, all that support was eventually turned against him and used more effectively than Libya could ever hope for.

The 1987 war was appropriately named "The Toyota War" and gave the third world it's most potent weapon: the Technical. Find any pictures from the Libyan Civil War and you'll see hundreds of them with every conceivable weapon mounted. That's irony for you, the very weapon that banished Gaddafi from Chad was also used in his ultimate downfall.

Now there are depressing conflicts, wars that simply are dark with very little humor. The Sudan internal war, for example, is extremely depressing in the never ending massacres, small stakes and the inability for anybody to stop it, or even care. Luckily we have the likes of Gaddafi, Idi Amin, and others to perk us up, make us laugh and realize that we can find that streak of dark humor in war. We just need to look for it.