The Libyan Civil War: Rebel BMP-1 Turret Technicals

     Two Libyan rebel NSTVs (Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles) or “technicals” as such vehicles are known in professional military circles. During the Libyan Civil War, rebels made heavy use of technicals as did pro-Gaddafi forces. The rebels utilized technicals as a means to create high mobility vehicles to rapidly deploy troops as well as conduct hit-and-run engagements. Such vehicles were a necessity given the rebels had very little in the way of vehicles capable of mounting heavy weapons and genuine armored vehicles and tanks were a rarity in rebel forces. 

     These two technicals are fitted with turrets removed from BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles (likely taken from captured but non-functional BMP-1s). The turret houses a 73mm 2A28 "Grom" low-pressure, smoothbore semi-automatic gun along with a coaxial 7.62 mm PKT machine gun. From other images of similar “tank trucks”, a square metal support frame is locally fabricated upon which the turret is placed, the entire support frame secured to the bed of the pick-up truck. It is unlikely the electric turret traverse is kept (no doubt to save weight) and so the turret has to be turned manually. One such truck, involved in the Battle of Galaa in June 2011, showed that when firing, the weapon operator manually loaded the gun (as the automatic loader was either not present or discarded) and dismounted the truck although a simple computer chair was situated beneath the turret for the gunner. The operator reached his arm up into the turret and used his hand to trigger the gun. Upon firing, recoil was experienced on the truck though not to a significant degree though how many shots the support frame could take before failing is not known. 

     It is doubtful that these “tank trucks” fire the gun while on the move and are more likely used as mobile, direct fire artillery as the gun can fire a high-explosive round in addition to a HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) round. In most cases, the 1PN22M1 6x/6.7x magnification image intensifying monocular periscope sight used by the BMP-1’s gunner is kept (seen to the left of the gun on the turret top). The flat rail on top of the gun mantlet is for the fitting of a 9M14 Malyutka (NATO codename AT-3 Sagger) ATGM (Anti-Tank Guided Missile) though no rebel “tank trucks” have been seen with a Sagger mounted.