The essential description of a Technical is a civilian car or truck with a big gun bolted on to it and some offroad wheels. Beyond that is extras you might not always see like improvised armour plating or bigger wheels.
And the truth is your average pickup (like a Toyota) just isn’t designed to handle the kick of a .50 cal MG or whatever monster their owners strap to the back.
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Like your average technical it’s got a nice hefty diesel engine and comes with a gun on the back. But unlike your average technical it also has:
- four-wheel drive on four independently-connected wheels
- A V-shaped chassis under the crew pod to deflect the blast of any mines it runs over.
- An easily-removable engine unit
- Composite plating around the cabin that is comparable to metal ballistic armour
- A wide catalogue of specially-designed modules for a variety of mission profiles
- Provision for multiple vehicle-mounted machine guns
- Quarry truck grade kevlar tyres.
All for the low, low price of 1.5 million dollars a piece. An arm and a leg for you and me, but for a fully-geared military force with an ever-increasing budget, that’s a bargain price tag for what it needs to do.
Developed nations like the UK and US have the resources to develop a vehicle perfectly suited to what they are going to encounter. The Foxhound’s V-shaped chassis was a design response to dozens of Humvees and Land Rovers getting blown up by roadside mines and IEDs in the Middle East. It acts like an angled shield that both protects the crew compartment and deflects the blast. While the rest of the cabin is plated in composites to deflect bullets that would effortlessly punch through the thin steel shell of your typical Toyota.
Developed nations can also afford for full-sized pit crews made up of university-trained engineers to keep their toys operational. So developed nations can not only afford better, they can afford support crews to maintain these cutting-edge machines and hire as many specialists as required to improve the design.
