By Spring 2020, the international terrorist organization known as the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL) has lost most of its territorial holdings globally. In Iraq and Syria, the group has been dealt an apparent fatal blow. But looks can be deceiving, and this is a group that has stood the test of time, remaining and expanding throughout the societies it afflicts and lurking just below the surface, if submerged at all. One of the elements that has enabled IS to grow so rapidly and widely has been their ability to utilize captured vehicles.
Vehicles, especially technicals and other armored personnel carriers, allowed IS to go from a terrorist organization, staging random attacks and bombings, to a guerrilla army that was capable of carrying out assaults on military outposts and prisons. Finally, the group morphed into a hybrid army, combining elements of conventional mechanized warfare with guerrilla and terrorist tactics to form an ever-shifting, adapting, and hard-to-kill enemy. Arrayed against them in Iraq were the Iraqi Security Forces, severely under-staffed, corrupt, and demoralized. These soldiers had been trained in light infantry and counterinsurgency tactics by the United States, at great expense, but were effectively a large police force. When IS managed to convert itself into something of a hybrid army, the combined impact of propaganda, preexisting demoralization, and ineffective tactics for defense led many Iraqi soldiers to flee for their lives rather than stand and fight.
This article aims to examine some of the most prominent vehicles utilized by IS during their struggle from 2013-present. Much of the information has been gleaned from years of monitoring the conflict via social media and video releases, and through personal contacts. A number of those contacts make appearances in this article, and many of them have requested anonymity.
Technicals | Pickup Trucks to Delivery Lorries
The most numerically-dominant vehicle in the IS inventory is one which has become ubiquitous to modern battlefields: the technical. With a lineage leading back to the introduction of the automobile, the technical as we know it today really came into being in the mid-1970s. Members of the Sahrawi People’s Liberation Army, fighting for the independence of Western Sahara from Mauritania and later Morocco, utilized Land Rovers and small arms given to them by the Algerian government (opponent of Morocco) to rapidly attack vast swaths of territory across the desert before disappearing before their foes could assemble their forces.
Fast-forward to 1987 and the Libyan invasion of Chad, wherein the Libyan Army (under Muammar Gaddafi) had advanced into a disputed territory, the Aozou Strip, with mechanized forces. The Chadian forces were unable to match the Libyans in terms of heavy equipment (tank vs. tank, jet vs. jet). N’Djamena requested French and American support in repelling the Libyan invasion. Rather than accept sophisticated weapons systems the Chadian government knew would be useless against the better-trained Libyan military, Chad’s forces were sent Toyota pickup trucks mounted with MILAN anti-tank missiles and heavy machine guns, along with anti-aircraft missiles. These truck-mounted heavy weapons, when used in conjunction with traditional swarm tactics employed by locals for generations, proved decisive on the battlefield, eventually leading the conflict itself to be known as “The Great Toyota War.”
From there, the next major appearance of technicals on the battlefield was in the Somali Civil War. Scenes from Black Hawk Down showed technical of many varieties being used to great effect. An avid moviegoer, Saddam Hussein and his son Uday ordered the Fedayeen Saddam to import thousands of pickup trucks for use in urban warfare settings. Thus, when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, they often ran into insurgents fielding pickup trucks. They proved a poor match for American mechanized firepower with air support. IS has utilized a variety of technical for a multitude of purposes. Some of the most common, as outlined in a Twitter thread (unfortunately now deleted) by @MENA_Conflict (a former US military member posting under an assumed name):
Gun Trucks: Some of the most common IS technicals, these light-to-medium pickup trucks are typically equipped with a heavy machine gun (DShK, M2 Browning, M85), or sometimes a grenade launcher (AGS-17, Mk. 19). They require two people to operate (driver and gunner) and can transport a small squad of infantry, with supplies, long distances at a rapid pace.
Support Trucks: These technicals are equipped with an anti-aircraft cannon of some kind, typically a Soviet-made ZU-23-2 (or the quad-barreled ZU-23-4 variant) or the AZP S-60 and are to be used in a support/assistance role rather than direct assault. Due to their inability to fire 360-degrees, and the fact that their cannons must be pointed straight back in order to avoid rocking the truck (and thus reducing accuracy so as to be useless) makes driving/positioning them significantly more difficult than their lighter-armed cousins.
Tank Destroyer: Hearkening back to the early days of the technical in Chad, tank destroyer variants will have a recoilless rifle (SPG-9) or an anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) in the bed, and sometimes will have their cabs chopped down to afford 360-degree visibility. These trucks are used to rapidly flank heavily-armored combat vehicles in order to attack them from the sides/rear, where armor will be thinner. Their high speed means that many older Soviet tanks (T-55, T-62, and the Chinese Type-59/Type-69) will be unable to turn their turrets fast enough to engage the trucks. Some of these technicals have been equipped with full-fledged turrets, often taken from a BMP-1 Infantry Fighting Vehicle. There have even been a few large technicals (delivery trucks/garbage trucks) modified to carry turrets from main battle tanks.
Indirect Fire Support: These technicals are equipped with a myriad of rocket artillery launchers, from chopped up BM-21 Grad components to purpose-built IRAM-launchers (Propane tank on a cluster of Grad rockets), with some even including captured rocket pods from crashed helicopters/aircraft and captured airbases. They are used to bombard wide areas and provide the same sort of rocket artillery support the Russian army draws on the BM-21 Grad/BM-30 Smerch for; or, closer to home, something like a poor-man’s M270 or HIMARS.
Artillery Technical: These technicals are remarkably similar to their “legitimate” cousins in state inventories, such as the French CAESAR artillery system. Often equipped with the Soviet-made M-46 field gun, they can provide fire support with the ability to egress before return fire arrives, a valuable asset on the modern battlefield.
Armored Personnel Carriers | Humvees and Homemade Battlewagons
By far the most common IS armored personnel carrier (APC) is the American-made M1151 up-armored Humvee (HMMWV). Captured in the thousands from the Iraqi Army in 2014, IS used these vehicles to great effect, staging mechanized assaults across Iraq and Syria and transforming the organization into a conventional military. With high mobility, decent armor, and a powerful weapon (a heavy machine gun or grenade launcher), Humvees often put IS fighters on the same level as the soldiers who stood against them; often, it gave them better mobility and firepower than their poorly-equipped militia opponents. Humvees were also used in covert attacks, maintaining their Iraqi Federal Police/Iraqi Army markings and often driven by IS insurgents in stolen uniforms, these vehicles could gain entry to the heart of enemy territory before opening fire.
These two key elements of the Humvee, in particular in Iraq, proved decisive. IS frequently sweeps out of the open desert to attack remote outposts, villages, and encircle cities. They utilize the openness of the western Iraqi deserts and the rapid mobility of their mechanized forces to overwhelm and confuse, “attacking from all sides” as it is popularly reported. But Humvees, unique from most technicals, also offer a covert element, in that properly-disguised vehicles can be used to sneak deep into enemy territory before attacking. Additionally, many Humvees were converted into Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (SVBIED), as will be addressed later.
Aside from Humvees (M1151, M1152, M1114), IS also operated Russian/Soviet-made vehicles such as the BTR-80, but the primary armored personnel carriers were MT-LB, M113, and BMP-1/BMP-2 (technically the latter two are infantry fighting vehicles). IS often used BMPs as harassment weapons, knowing that many isolated, poorly-equipped garrisons in Kurdistan (primarily YBS outposts near Sinjar) lacked any effective anti-armor weapons. Thus, they were free to periodically drive within firing range of an outpost, lob a few shells past the sandbags, and take off before air support could arrive (if it were even allocated).
Main Battle Tanks | T-55, T-62, T-72, Type-69, Abrams
IS operated a variety of main battle tanks (MBT), captured from either the Syrian or the Iraqi armies. In Syria this means Soviet T-55, T-62, and T-72 models, along with the same from Iraq plus a handful of Chinese knockoffs of Soviet tanks, and a few American M1 Abrams tanks (which proved difficult to use for logistical reasons). IS armored units were divided into various units with different bases, but most of them were assigned to the “Tank Battalion”, which was ostensibly independent but in reality had components attached to regular IS assault units (“Platoons of Special Tasks”) for offensives. The basic format of a “Platoon of Special Tasks” was a handful of technicals of various types, combined with tanks from the Tank Battalion, and artillery as necessary. Fighters were typically from Raqqa or the Raqqa area, and when they were done with the mission they would return to their component bases. Thus, no two offensives would be guaranteed to employ the same fighters. For example, a small assault on an outpost might consist of three technicals, one APC (either homemade or captured), and one tank. There are three other known IS military formations that have incorporated armored units into their order of battle: Othman bin Affan Division, Abi Obaida bin al-Jarrah Division, and Zubayr ibn al-Awam Divsiion.
The combination of anti-personnel and anti-armor weapons provides a powerful, mobile punch that can at least bloody most forces. The majority of Special Tasks personnel/equipment were based around Tabqah, preventing the need to travel through Raqqa on the way to offensives (thus making it easier to avoid Coalition detection). IS proved adept at using trucks/trailers to transport tanks to/from battlefields, saving countless hours on maintenance. This logistical prowess undoubtedly stems from the organization’s old Ba’athist section, as Ba’athist Iraq was uniquely (among Arab states) capable in terms of logistical/support functions on the battlefield. Contrary to popular belief, tanks have tremendous value on the battlefield even fielded in small numbers. Against a Western military, IS would stand no chance. But against Peshmerga fighters in Kurdistan, often armed with nothing larger than an RPG-7? Or Sunni tribal militia in Iraq, armed with AK-47s, or rifles of older vintage? Even a single tank can break the back of a determined defense force. Thus, IS followed a tactic more akin to the use of tanks by the US Marine Corps, wherein tanks are infantry support vehicles/assault guns as opposed to mobile, anti-tank vehicles.
Artillery | Tube Artillery and Rocket Artillery
Artillery played a key role in the rapid advance of IS. This included mortars of all sizes (from smaller 82mm on up to 120mm), with some being homemade. The next step up would be the so-called “Hell Cannon”, popularized by the Syrian opposition forces and consisting of a crude barrel pointed skyward, into which a propane tank full of explosives with a rocket attached to it is dropped and ignited. It flies roughly in the direction of the enemy and blows up a considerable area where it lands. Beyond Hell Cannons, guns like the Soviet M-46, D-74, and D-30/M-30 howitzers were relatively common.
IS also captured a number of American-made M198 howitzers near Mosul. One cannon was left intact at Camp Speicher, an Iraqi Air Force training academy outside Tikrit (north of Baghdad). The base was overrun in June 2014; during the evacuation of the base and its personnel, Iraqi Air Force C-130 transport aircraft landed and were filled to capacity with people. An attempt was made to load the final M198 onto a C-130, but the pilot realized that doing so would mean leaving dozens of people behind. He made an executive decision and overrode the ranking officer on the aircraft, pushing the howitzer down the cargo bay and onto the tarmac to make room for more cadets and their families. When the C-130 finally departed, it was nearly shot down; no further rescue flights were mounted, and Camp Speicher’s name became synonymous with massacre. In addition to the human losses, with more than 1,700 cadets brutally executed, the Iraqi Army lost at least one M198. The M198 from Camp Speicher ended up being the very first target of an American airstrike in Iraq after IS began using it to shell Erbil.
Unmanned Aerial Systems (and some aircraft)
Throughout its history, IS (and its predecessors) have proven adept at coopting American tactics, notably by attacking mid-level bureaucrat and administrators in Anbar province in Iraq. Another notable adaptation of American tactics is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for battlefield reconnaissance and disruption. When American special forces first began fielding armed MQ-1 Predator drones over Afghanistan and Pakistan, they succeeded in making it difficult, if not impossible, for groups of insurgents to gather.
By the time of the Battle of Mosul in 2016-2017, Iraqi soldiers had also grown weary of gathering, for the same reason. But rather than operate expensive, high-altitude aircraft, IS began utilizing consumer-grade quadcopters, such as the DJI Phantom III, in conjunction with a crude payload release device and what was typically a rifle grenade strapped to a badminton shuttlecock fin. The drone would be flown over a target, sometimes an arms depot and sometimes a high-value enemy target (although often just on groups of enemy soldiers), and would then drop one or more grenades. Some of the attacks were absolutely devastating, destroying entire storage areas. Beyond quadcopters, IS also utilized a number of fixed-wing drones, hobby aircraft equipped with cameras and flown at formations of enemy soldiers (akin to the IAI Harpy suicide drone utilized by Azerbaijan against Armenia in Nogorno-Karabakh). IS used quadcopters for more than just attacks. They were also used to direct SVBIED attacks, artillery, and rocket fire. SVBIEDs could be guided to their target from the drone, allowing the entire front of the vehicle to be armored.
The drones themselves were ordered in the hundreds (if not thousands), and doing so without setting off alarm bells was difficult. A series of front companies was set up to facilitate the purchase of drones and drone accessories, including IBACS (and several iterations of the name), ISYNKTEL, WAHMI Technologies, and Advance Technology Global LTD. IS also captured several fixed-wing aircraft intact when they took over Jirah Airfield. Among them, at least three Aero L-39ZA Albatros jet trainers (capable of being armed), and at least seven Mikoyan MiG-21 Fishbed single-engine jet fighter-bombers. In 2014, there were even reports of former Iraqi Air Force pilots learning to fly the aircraft for IS, but nothing further ever came of it (it is assumed they were shot down and/or crashed).
Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device (SVBIED)
The final vehicle category to be analyzed is that of the Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Device, or SVBIED. IS has always been adept at using SVBIEDs for attacks, dating as far back to the Jama’t Tawhid wal-Jihad attack on the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad in 2003 that killed the UN Chief of Mission in Iraq. For many years, SVBIEDs in Iraq were “covert”, with explosives tucked away into compartments inside the vehicle (to avoid discovery at American checkpoints). With the American withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, the stage was set for the introduction of armored SVBIEDs.
Early armored SVBIEDs had been seen in Iraq as early as 2007, with metal hidden behind windows for added protection. It wasn’t until 2012/2013 that exterior armor plating began to be seen. From there the next stage in the evolution of the SVBIED was to repurposed armored fighting vehicles, typically BMP-1 or M113s. The turrets would be removed and extra armor sometimes added, with the interior packed with explosives. A few tanks were used in this way, as were a good number of armored bulldozers. A horrifying addendum to this episode were the notable number of two-man SVBIEDs, sometimes a father/son duo, with one driving and another crewing a heavy machine gun with which to pin defending troops down long enough for the bomb to close in.
When Iraqi forces approached the outskirts of Mosul, IS began using tan paint on their SVBIEDs, in an attempt to help them better hide in the desert. As they approached the city proper, different colors of SVBIED began to appear. Some were painted to look like Iraqi military vehicles, others to look like civilian vehicles, complete with fake windows. They looked goofy, but were enough of a disguise to perhaps give the driver that extra second or two he needed to close the distance. As Iraqi forces moved into Mosul, SVBIEDs were often hidden in alleyways or garages, under rubble, waiting until a column of troops walked in front of it, at which point the driver would start the engine and drive straight forward for perhaps 3-5 seconds before detonating. The margin of error was nil. By the time the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) closed in on IS in Raqqa, SVBIED innovation had continued to the point of hiding armor plates behind plastic pieces of car body, which were re-attached. The car looked as though it had been in a collision, but if traveling at speed and in a panic, it might be hard to see the difference between a “stage-3 covert SVBIED” and a civilian vehicle.
Taken together, the abilities exhibited in the realm of vehicle procurement, modification, and eventual use on the battlefield set IS a step above most other terrorist organizations. With skills gleaned from former Ba’athist officers, defecting Syrian military personnel, and honed over two decades at war, IS demonstrates the folly of writing off our foes as backward or ignorant. From Shia militias in Iraq manufacturing quadcopter munitions to the adaptation of technical-like vehicles by Iran, Russia, Turkey, and even American Special Operations Forces, the impact IS had on the world of military vehicle development, and the history of human warfare in general, is far-reaching and will be long-lasting.
