— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) August 24, 2022 It’s our general desire here at The Autopian to not interject ourselves into politics where it doesn’t serve our readers, but cars do not exist in a vacuum and decisions made by policymakers do impact the hobby (The 25-year import rule, for instance). To stick your fingers in your ears and avert your eyes, sometimes, is to hand over important decisions to people who don’t get it. I’m not even sure that the Russian invasion of Ukraine can be considered political, but there’s your disclosure. There’s a lot of context required to explain what the hell is happening here and I do it because it’s worth it since this whole thing feels very new. First, a quick brief on what a technical is. It’s essentially a fast, off-road capable truck that carries a small number of armed troops and, typically, a gun or RPG mounted in the back. War On The Rocks has a pretty good explanation of the history, which goes back to the “Toyota War” when a bunch of under-armed Chadians decimated a Libyan army equipped with more traditional weapons. So that’s what a technical is. They’ve become popular in the Middle East, Africa, South America, and pretty much anywhere asymmetric warfare occurs. The Ukrainian Army, which has repelled a much larger and more conventional force, has built some crazy Mad Max-like technicals and used them to great effect against the Russians.
— ???????? Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 22, 2022 Because of this success, Ukraine has been asking for donations so they can buy more of the Toyota, Mitsubishi and other trucks that make up their Technical fleet. The next important thing to know: Russia has been, up to this point in history, seen as a leader in information warfare. They shamelessly spread lies and it’s hard to quickly refute them before another one pops up, especially on places like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Telegram. No amount of weak-armed factchecking works. In its place, a bunch of brave shitposters have responded to misinformation not with facts but with the kind of comically nonsensical meme-ing that ridicules the original poster in such a way that it negates and, more importantly, exposes how brazenly stupid their points were. These people are known as NAFO, or just fellas, and they exist to bonk (counter) the Vatniks (Russian online propagandists) who are trying to prop up the Orcs (Russian soldiers). If you have to ask the question “What Air Defense Doing” then maybe you should read this article from DW: Sure. So why am I writing about this? Because they raised enough money to buy, according to them (it’s hard to vet this claim) 101 technicals. And not only that, they have special camo and logos showing the Shiba Inu meme dog. There are some Mitsubishis, Isuzu, and a freaking WK Jeep Grand Cherokee! A gender-neutral dog cartoon character inspired by the long-running “doge” internet meme, the fella soon became the mascot for pro-Ukrainian mockery of “vatniks” who spearhead Russian propaganda online. This is for the “69th Sniffing Brigade” (draw your own conclusions there). Just look at the video:
I cannot account for the other vehicles, but this shows 11 trucks, SUVs, and vans ready to go to battle. With memes. In real war. To quote the excellent commentator Rob Lee, this isn’t the “first social media war, but it is the first extremely online war.” Unless this is all a hoax, and I don’t think it is, we’re going to see memelords helping Ukrainian soldiers literally touch grass and kick ass in actual war. Top image credit: YouTube Estonia is very unsurprising because the person who has been organizing these vehicle donations for NAFO actually is an Estonian currently in Kyiv. Either one is pretty much the ultimate in light support vehicles. You can up-armor a WK substantially. Base payload rating is 5 passengers plus 1500lbs. And both the 3.0CRD and 5.7 are “holy shit what” fast. The CRD is a mountain of torque, and when manually shifted, can do 0-60 a lot faster than you think. Much more importantly: the Mitsubishi Triton is the 101st technical provided to Ukraine by NAFO. Yeah. They’ve provided 101 vehicles to Ukraine. To celebrate 100, the entire batch was painted in special NAFO camo. That’s not regular camo. The black and brown markings are NAFO shibe silhouettes. i’m all about supporting smol fracking LNG exporters against the tyranny of the russian pipeline! They cater to Nazis and fascism-enthusiasts like you. You’ll find no such welcome here, only a heaping helping of “fuck off back to Truth Social. Aww, that’s right, it’s bankrupt. Sad.” Funny, isn’t it? By the way, a “technical” is any vehicle modified to carry a large weapon; this often involved cutting out roofs, rear seats and trunks and welding or bolting a weapon mount to a rear frame element. Obviously pick up trucks are ideal, but even FANT/GUNT in Chad and Libya utilized what they had during the Toyota War. And what they built their technical force around was 400 HiLux pickup trucks given to them by the French air force, along with heavy automatic weapons, light rocket launchers and anti-armor weapons. That transfer was conceived and organized by a couple of senior officers who’d served with the Free French in North Africa in the Second World War and had worked air recon coordination with the LRDG units mentioned in a post above. Well, that’s a big improvement over a certain other car blog that a number of authors here were previously employed by.
