Posted 06.15.2011 at 1:46 pm
6 Comments
Power Wheels Robotic Tank
Al Jazeera via YouTube
Faced with arms shortages and continual bombing by NATO and the forces of Muammar Gaddafi, rebels in Libya are becoming DIY weapons manufacturers. A school in Misrata has been transformed into a makeshift factory, where toys and trucks are turning into machine gun-equipped robots.
Al Jazeera took a tour of the DIY weapons depot, where a Power Wheels toy was transformed into a robot with a machine gun. Mohammad bin Saud’s team designed the car, which can be remotely operated.
A full-sized truck can also be operated from afar, allowing the rebels to hide from snipers while aiming at their targets using a video system.
In another example, the rebels took handlebars and ball bearings from a bike, a base plate from a 4x4 truck, a tank swivel and a gun stripped from a damaged fighter plane, and turned it all into a drivable gun turret.
Battlefield robots are increasingly common among the world’s armies — there are plenty serving in Iraq, for instance — so remote tanks and machine guns are not exactly new. But the DIY aspect takes it to a new level. Some of the Libyan rebels are engineers by training, happy to lend their skills to the liberation effort. But others are simply garage tinkerers — like chief weapons engineer Rajab, a former truck driver. In the Al Jazeera video below, he explains how to salvage found munitions and forge new ones.
When even outnumbered, out-equipped military forces are designing battle robots, it’s pretty clear they represent the future of warfare.
[Al Jazeera via IEEE Spectrum]
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"Faced with arms shortages and continual bombing by NATO and the forces of Muammar Gaddafi, rebels in Libya are becoming DIY weapons manufacturers."
The rebels aren't being bombed by NATO, the loyalists are
stop illegal wars!!
Well, it's not actually illegal for the rebels. I mean, it is, by nature of being an insurrection, but that's a different sense. = ) I don't really care about the American politics on the issue, nor do I think I should have to - it's all fairly straightforward, ethically, for the Libyans.
It is, admittedly, too bad that this display of awesome garage gadgetry couldn't be related to a more peaceful purpose, but it's hard not to appreciate the combination of heavy industrial hardware, DIY hacking, and sticking it to the man. It's all very "What have you hacked today?", and I'd rather appreciate that in the positive and the situation it's in response to in the negative than just ignore them both.
This was a pretty alarming bit of news for me to see. It's apparent that the Libyan opposition has the support of the middle class, so engineers and the like. This is really different from other military groups we've seen come out of the middle east in the last 30 years (namely, al qaeda, taliban, etc)
So I went off and did some news reading. If you're thinking about al qaeda involvement in this; turns out there are some al qaeda involved to some extent, namely that they're stealing weapons from the Libyans. Yup, that is the very definition of utter pricks.
These DIY weapons platforms are a pretty good example of how the taliban and al qaeda aren't supported by the people. If they were, their arsenal would be more than what pakistan can buy for them on the black market.
Not illegal for the Libyans, but illegal U.S involvement. Only congress can declare war..says so in the constitution. North America shouldn't be dragged into wars by U.N (Rockafeller) decree.
There was a New York Times article on somethoing like this.
The Rebels have set up a large network of workshops where they are taking everyday things like trucks and weaponizing them. They're making armored trucks with turrets, customizing warheads to produce more shrapnel, and a lot of other good things for the war effort.