Exploring the Etymological Origin of the so-called “Technical”

The term technical as a designation for light improvised fighting vehicles is quite the neologism (a word or term which has entered use relatively recently), which has increasingly entered common vernacular, though not yet fully accepted into mainstream military parlance of professional First World armies. The latter often speak instead of a Non-Standard Tactical Vehicle (NSTV), which quite sufficiently covers what a technical actually is. In this article we’ll examine the etymological origins of the ‘technical’.

The reason for a divergence in the use of the two different designations: technical and NSTV, for one and the same concept and the popularity of the word technical is simple: the term NSTV is outdated and underestimates the important position of the technical in irregular forces. Contrary to the term, the open-backed civilian pick-up truck mounted with a heavy support weapon has become very much the standard tactical vehicle of irregular and even some regular armies in countries less well-of in the treasury department. Despite mobility and lightning speed being the main drivers for the use of technicals in offensive military operations, the vehicle has gained the prestigious reputation of being a status symbol for any self-respecting militia. Its use grew so substantially that it even prompted US officials to question Toyota on the acquiring of an excessive amount of pick-up trucks by a notorious terrorist group in the Middle-East. This is no mere non-standard vehicle. It’s the pinnacle of technical prowess and engineering capacity in asymmetric warfare for decades to come. So if we’re going to use the term technical, we should start by exploring its etymological origin.

A technical is never armored nor tracked. It is in fact a four-wheel drive pick-up or jeep, most popularly Toyota models like the Hilux or Land Cruiser, with a medium to heavy support weapon mounted on its back. This weapon could be machine guns, anti-aircraft guns or even a short-range multiple rocket launcher. Crews mostly consist of the driver, an armed soldier riding shotgun and an operator standing on the back of the pick-up to operate the mounted weapon. This allows for highly offensive fire and movement maneuvers, so-called tank desant tactics when transporting several troops and versatile fire and reverse moves from different non-fixed firing positions. IFV’s, SVBIED’s or even HMMWV’s can by this definition therefore not be considered technicals. So basically, a technical is an unarmored fighting truck with a mounted weapon and an active crew of at least two individuals.

This method of waging war has been around for about a century. Historians trace the first “proto-technicals” to the Great War’s Eastern Front. The impoverished regions of Southern Russia and Ukraine, where the fronts were fluid and mobile warfare gained much significance, saw the use of so-called tachankas, turret carts drawn by horses across open terrain. During the First World War the Canadian Army on the Western Front operated lightly armoured, machine-gun armed converted civilian trucks known as Armoured Autocars. Since then, this way of fighting constantly evolved and grew overtime into the technicals we know today. All researchers agree that the origin of this word should be looked for within Somalia during its 1980’s civil war. According to Leigh Neville’s 2018 book Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles from the Great Toyota War to modern Special Forces, the neologism arose when non-government organizations (NGO’s) attempted to get a grip on the increasingly severe humanitarian situation inside the war-torn and ravaged country. Because aid shipments and operational facilities were no match for neighboring warlords and roaming looters, some NGO’s decided to call in armed guards. Being required to remain visibly neutral and prohibited to carry weapons by international law, the NGO’s instead resorted to hiring local clansmen and fortune seekers to protect their assets. An AFP article published 24 October 1992, under the title UN Peacekeepers’ Mission Sand-bound in Mogadishu confirms this use of the vehicles, stating: “there are no peacekeepers at any of the key aid delivery and transit points. When one of the only too rare UNOSOM vehicles goes past, it is escorted by ‘technical’ vehicles full of armed fighters — mercenaries at the service of humanitarian organisations ensuring the safety of international organisations and visiting journalists.”

The existence of this practice was carefully admitted by the NGO’s themselves, though nuanced. In a press release by the International Committee Red Cross as reported in the 21 May 1993 edition of the French newspaper Le Monde, the ICRC stated that: “three thousand men (two thousand for the north of the city of Mogadishu and a thousand for the south), provided by clans and sub-clans played in effect the role of ‘police force’ in exchange for ‘a small quantity of food’ which constituted the only way to successfully deliver assistance to the victims.” This press release was organized at the exact same time the American press was publishing several articles denouncing the use of mercenaries or armed men to protect the convoys and distribution centers.

Despite the dubious yet well-meant intentions of the NGO’s, these men basically served as mercenaries who required pay one way or the other. The costs to hire them “were”, as Neville’s puts it, “listed in the NGO’s expense claims innocuously as ‘technical support’. From this the clansmen and their iconic vehicles, the Mad Max-style armed pick-up trucks, became known as technicals.” He quotes the US Army’s Combat Studies Institute as having stated: “The term technicals, referring to the armed vehicles employed by Somali bandits and factional militia, was a fallout of the NGO’s referring to the armed personnel they hired for protection as technical advisers.” This etymology of the word technical is undoubtedly the most popular and agreed upon version by US military analysts and writers, both online and offline. Richard W. Stewart, an expert on American military history, writes in his 2002 book The United States Army in Somalia, 1992-1994: “Since UN and private volunteer organizations were generally prohibited from hiring armed security forces, they instead hired local tribesmen as technical assistants hence the nickname technicals. The technicals were armed bodyguards, often driving pick-up trucks or land cruisers with machines guns or other heavy weapons mounted.” This account of the American intervention in Somalia was endorsed by John S. Brown, Chief of Military History of the US Army. From this term, the Somali word tigniko or tikniko derived, referring to the technical vehicle. In Arabic, the second language of Somalia, however, the word is not used, and is instead referred to simply as āliya rubāʿiyya al-dafʿ or sayyāra dafʿ rubāʿī, i.e. a four-wheel drive.

In his book, Neville mentions an alternative etymological origin for the word technical. This version was first disseminated by journalist and long-time foreign correspondent for Africa Michael Maren in his 1997 book The Road to Hell, in which he describes the detrimental effects of foreign aid and international charity on local economies. Despite being very critical of international development assistance and food relief, Maren doesn’t link the term technical with the NGO’s. Instead, he states that “the Somali National Movement had gotten their hands on some heavy artillery but needed to make them mobile. Some engineers in the region had been trained by the Russian arms manufacturer Tekniko, and they undertook the task of mounting the weapons on Land Cruisers.” Maren concludes that the company name Tekniko eventually got anglicized into technical. This alternate explanation of the word’s etymology has gained some foothold among other journalists, mainly those writing about the drawbacks of humanitarianism as well, like Robert DiPrizio in his 2002 Armed Humanitarians. 

Neville describes this alternate etymology as “intriguing”, which hits the nail on the head to say the least. There seems to be little known trace of any Soviet company or manufacturer called Tekniko. We have conducted a significant search for online references to the company and spoken with both Russian and non-Russian sources on the subject, including our own contributors here at Silah Report, and browsed through some specialized books, but the name fails to show up at all. A group of redditors in the Reddit group r/shittytechnicals, an online community dedicated to Improvised Armed Vehicles, or Technicals, also came to the same conclusion: Maren’s explanation is based on quite a bungled record. One user called Elaphoil, however, makes an interesting point. Maren’s story of Tekniko would hold water only if it wasn’t an official Soviet manufacturer, but was instead “a black market industry of Russian ex-pat workers going through African conflicts to enrich themselves using contacts from back home and their own skills”

It’s to be believed that the name Tekniko was never used at all. There is simply too little information or evidence to make such an assumption. However, the possibility of Russian ex-pats having worked in the region makes sense. The Soviet Union sent about 1,500 military advisors to the Horn of Africa during the late 1970’s Ogaden War to support Ethiopia with Russian-supplied artillery and armor. There was no official Soviet support for the Somali Barre-regime or any of the militia factions during the civil war, but it wouldn’t come as a surprise that some of those Russian advisors decided to trade the Russian winter for the Somali sun as engineers for the Somali factions after the Ogaden War. Despite Tekniko not showing up as the name of a specific company, the word very much exists in Russian military parlance. In Russian, военная техкика (voennaya teknika) means such a vehicle used for military purposes. Armored vehicles, like tanks or APC’s, are called бронетехкика (broneteknika), again the word teknika here referring to the vehicle in a military context. So it is certainly possible that Michael Maren did indeed hear the word teknika being thrown around during his time in Somalia, not as the name of a manufacturer, but as a noun used by Russian engineers and their Somali allies to refer to the improvised armed pick-up trucks. This then anglicized into technical and the Somali cognate tigniko or tikniko. 

In conclusion, however, Maren’s opinion on the word’s origin remains controversial and it remains hard to establish any concrete evidence that would lead us to attach great importance to the possible Russian origin of the technical neologism. There is no trace of a company, either operating officially or on the black marker, called Tekniko, nor are there any real indications of substantial Russian expatriate activity across Somalia throughout the civil war. Leigh Neville’s opinion on the NGO connection to the etymological origin of the technical looks to be the most solid explanation out there.