A technical, known as a non-standard tactical vehicle (NSTV) in United States military parlance, is a light improvised fighting vehicle, typically an open-backed civilian pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle modified to mount SALWs and heavy weaponry, such as a machine gun, automatic grenade launcher, anti-aircraft autocannon, rotary cannon, anti-tank weapon, anti-tank gun, ATGM, mortar, multiple rocket launcher, recoilless rifle, or other support weapon, etc.
A recoilless rifle (rifled), recoilless launcher (smoothbore), or simply recoilless gun, sometimes abbreviated to "RR" or "RCL" is a type of lightweight artillery system or man-portable launcher that is designed to eject some form of countermass such as propellant gas from the rear of the weapon at the moment of firing, creating forward thrust that counteracts most of the weapon's recoil. This allows for the elimination of much of the heavy and bulky recoil-counteracting equipment of a conventional cannon as well as a thinner-walled barrel, and thus the launch of a relatively large projectile from a platform that would not be capable of handling the weight or recoil of a conventional gun of the same size. Technically, only devices that use spin-stabilized projectiles fired from a rifled barrel are recoilless rifles, while smoothbore variants are recoilless guns. This distinction is often lost, and both are often called recoilless rifles.
Shoulder-fired missile, shoulder-launched missile or man-portable missile, among other variants, are common slang terms to describe high-caliber shoulder-mounted weapons systems; that is, weapons firing large, heavy projectiles ("missiles"), typically using the backblast principle, which are small enough to be carried by a single person and fired while held on one's shoulder. The word "missile" in this context is used in its original broad sense of a heavy projectile, and encompasses all shells and rockets, guided or unguided. A more formal variant is simply shoulder-fired weapons system and the like.
The Vietnam War involved the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) or North Vietnamese Army (NVA), National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (NLF) or Viet Cong (VC), and the armed forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), United States Armed Forces, Republic of Korea Armed Forces, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Royal Thai Armed Forces, Australian Defence Force, and New Zealand Defence Force, with a variety of irregular troops.
The M1917 Browning machine gun is a heavy machine gun used by the United States armed forces in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War; it has also been used by other nations. It was a crew-served, belt-fed, water-cooled machine gun that served alongside the much lighter air-cooled Browning M1919. It was used at the battalion level, and often mounted on vehicles. There were two main iterations: the M1917, which was used in World War I and the M1917A1, which was used thereafter. The M1917, which was used on some aircraft as well as in a ground role, had a cyclic rate of 450 rounds per minute. The M1917A1 had a cyclic rate of 450 to 600 rounds per minute.
A heavy machine gun (HMG) is significantly larger than light, medium or general-purpose machine guns. HMGs are typically too heavy to be man-portable and require mounting onto a weapons platform to be operably stable or tactically mobile, have more formidable firepower, and generally require a team of personnel for operation and maintenance.
The M40 recoilless rifle is a portable, crew-served 105 mm recoilless rifle made in the United States. Intended primarily as an anti-tank weapon, it could also be employed in an antipersonnel role with the use of an antipersonnel-tracer flechette round. The bore was commonly described as being 106 mm caliber but is in fact 105 mm; the 106 mm designation was intended to prevent confusion with incompatible 105 mm ammunition from the failed M27. The air-cooled, breech-loaded, single-shot rifle fired fixed ammunition and was used primarily from a wheeled ground mount or M92 ground mount. It was designed for direct firing only, and sighting equipment for this purpose was furnished with each weapon, including an affixed M8C .50 cal spotting rifle.
The B-10 recoilless rifle is a Soviet 82 mm smoothbore recoilless gun. It could be carried on the rear of a BTR-50 armoured personnel carrier. It was a development of the earlier SPG-82, and entered Soviet service during 1954. It was phased out of service in the Soviet Army in the 1960s and replaced by the SPG-9, remaining in service with parachute units at least until the 1980s. Although now obsolete it was used by many countries during the Cold War.
The Type 69 85mm RPG, made by Norinco, is a Chinese variant of the Soviet RPG-7. First introduced in 1972, the Type 69 is a common individual anti-tank weapon in service with the PLA. More advanced grenade rounds were developed in the 1980s and 1990s to meet the requirements of modern battlefields. Eventually, the aging Type 69 RPG family was replaced by more modern anti-tank weapon systems developed by China such as the Type 89 and Type 08.
The M20 recoilless rifle is a U.S. 75 mm caliber recoilless rifle T21E12 that was used during the last months of the Second World War and extensively during the Korean War. It could be fired from an M1917A1 .30 caliber machine gun tripod, or from a vehicle mount, typically a Jeep. Its shaped charge warhead, also known as HEAT, was capable of penetrating 100 mm of armor. Although the weapon proved ineffective against the T-34 tank and most other tanks during the Korean War, it was used primarily as a close infantry support weapon to engage all types of targets including infantry and lightly armored vehicles. The M20 proved useful against pillboxes and other types of field fortifications.
The Type 98 (PF-98) is a 120mm unguided anti-tank rocket system developed by Norinco for the People's Liberation Army as a successor to the Type 65 and Type 78 recoilless guns. It is also known by its nickname, "Queen Bee". It can be equipped with a firing control system which can calculate and adjust for projectile drop before the rocket fires.
The QLZ-87 is an air-cooled, gas operated 35×32mmSR automatic grenade launcher (AGL) that is crew transportable with limited amounts of ammunition. Unusual for handheld grenade launchers, the QLZ-87 fires high-velocity grenades of 35x32 mmSR caliber, which provides a longer range and flatter firing trajectory.
The M18 recoilless rifle is a 57 mm shoulder-fired, anti-tank recoilless rifle that was used by the U.S. Army in World War II and the Korean War. Recoilless rifles are capable of firing artillery-type shells at reduced velocities comparable to those of standard cannon, but with greater accuracy than anti-tank weapons that used unguided rockets, and almost entirely without recoil. The M18 was a breech-loaded, single-shot, man-portable, crew-served weapon. It could be used in both anti-tank and anti-personnel roles. The weapon could be both shoulder fired or fired from a prone position. The T3 front grip doubled as an adjustable monopod and the two-piece padded T3 shoulder cradle could swing down and to the rear as a bipod for the gunner. The most stable firing position was from the tripod developed for the water-cooled Browning M1917 machine gun.
The Type 80 is a general-purpose machine gun (GPMG) manufactured by Norinco in China, based on the Soviet PKM. The machine gun was certified for design finalisation in 1980 and entered the PLA service in the mid-1980s, specifically in 1983. The Type 80 was intended as a successor to the Chinese independently developed Type 67, doing well in tests conducted in the Chengdu Military Region before it was dropped and instead, opted to keep the Type 67 GPMG in use.
The Type 77 heavy machine gun or Type 85 is a Chinese 12.7×108mm heavy machine gun featuring an indigenous design.
Man-portable anti-tank systems are traditionally portable shoulder-launched projectile systems firing heavy shell-type projectiles, typically designed to combat protected targets, such as armoured vehicles, field fortifications and at times even low-flying aircraft.
The ZijiangM99 is a semi-automatic anti-materiel rifle first introduced in 2005. It has since seen use by the People's Liberation Army Navy and Marine Corps in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, and has been seen in the hands of various rebel groups involved in the Syrian Civil War.
