DIY Weapons of the Syrian Rebels

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/02/diy-weapons-of-the-syrian-rebels/100461/

by youngerdryas • 13 years ago

127 103 13 years ago

theatlantic.com

CamperBob27• 13 years ago

Wow, these photos are awesome (#20 and #21 especially so), even if half of them are staged.

So how's that gun control thing working out for Assad, I wonder?

n3rdy2• 13 years ago

If they can use video and controllers like that to control the gun, what would stop them from making it wireless?

I would imagine the benefit of using something like that remotely would be worth the risk of possible signal interception.

edraferi4• 13 years ago

Complexity and reliability. If the batteries die on your xbox control mid-Halo, it's just annoying. If the batteries die on your remote machine gun with the enemy literally at the gates, it's life and death.

I don't think there's much need for wireless inside the tank in any case. Maybe for a remote placement turret without a vehicle mount it would be more useful.

nayefc5• 13 years ago

How disgusting. Very easy for you to equate the sad situation in Syria with America's gun control gun-obsessed society issue, from the comfort and safety of your home.

CamperBob27• 13 years ago

(Shrug) For better or worse, there seems to be a sort of genetic memory in at least some Americans that dates back to the time when we had to do something similar to gain our freedom.

I'm not taking a stand either way, but considering that most of the people murdered by guns in the 20th century were killed by their own government and police forces, I can see why some people prefer not to give those entities a monopoly on the use of force. Perhaps you could open your own mind a bit to alternative points of view, and quiet that jerking knee.

pekk6• 13 years ago

Yes, because the civil war in Syria was caused by Assad's violation of the Second Amendment.

Jeremy1026• 13 years ago

There is something to be said about human ingenuity. With minimal tools, the ability to create these weapons and armored vehicle is something special.

doctorstupid2• 13 years ago

I'm jealous. Looks like they're having a mighty good time. Such freedom to be a man I'll probably never know. It's sad to think that the time for people to truly rebel is quickly running out.

CamperBob27• 13 years ago

You were modded down (Score: -1, Bloodlust or whatever), but you still have a good point: if the Syrian regime were as technologically well-equipped as most Western governments, this uprising would have been a very short one.

We are going to be in a lot of trouble if a major Western power ever goes ape the way Germany did only one lifetime ago.

alexjeffrey• 13 years ago

To append a relevant quote from Einstein "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

unimpressive3• 13 years ago

>if the Syrian regime were as technologically well-equipped as most Western governments, this uprising would have been a very short one.

What's the gap between most dictatorships and most western governments look like anyway? Is it mainly Nuclear arms?

ctdonath3• 13 years ago

if the Syrian regime were as technologically well-equipped as most Western governments, this uprising would have been a very short one.

Likewise, if the Syrian uprising were as technologically well-equipped as a large fraction of Americans, the uprising would have been a very short one. Every year we field some 18,000,000 well-equipped civilian snipers in a live-fire live-target exercise aka "Operation Deer Season". This may explain why the US government is keen on disarming citizens of "assault weapons", even though such items are demonstrably less of a societal problem than stairs or swimming pools.

pekk6• 13 years ago

Between this and your other posts, you seem awfully interested in agitating against Western governments.

lucb1e• 13 years ago

I'm not so certain they're having a "mighty good time". More like "let's hope we'll survive tomorrow".

patrickk• 13 years ago

You sound like this guy:

http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/arab-spring-break-201209...

ctdonath3• 13 years ago

Get the book The World's Most Dangerous Places by Robert Young Pelton. It's basically a tourist guide to where you want to go and most people shouldn't.

doctorstupid2• 13 years ago

Thanks, I'm checking it out.

valuegram• 13 years ago

The "Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate" functionality on this page is really useful.

LatvjuAvs3• 13 years ago

Seriously, is there anyone who buys rebels story anymore? Wasn't Libya enough? But, to open ones eyes, one must face the ugly truth.

pooriaazimi• 13 years ago

Yes, there is: (a portion of) people who try not to generalize and fall victim to logical fallacies. Even if Libyan rebels were all terrorists and Gadhafi was a good guy (I'm not saying that' what you're sating; I'm just trying to make a point), it doesn't mean Syrian rebels, or North Korean rebels (of future!), or anyone else for that matter, are also X (I'm saying X, because I'm not entirely sure what you were implying Libyan rebels were).

bones6• 13 years ago

Brutal dictator ends up with a rebellion, who'd have thought? Unfortunately the byproduct of any measure of success of a rebellion in the middle east is credited to piousness. If it weren't the case, would you really have a problem with the people overthrowing this guy?

dkhenry• 13 years ago

The more I see pictures like these The more I wonder how well America would have fared if the rest of the world disengaged its self from our revolution the way we are disengaging ourselves from the Syrian one. I understand you don't want to put boots on the ground, but at least give them something so they are not fighting tanks and airplanes with giant slingshots.

stef252• 13 years ago

They're probably worried that whatever weapons are donated will eventually be used agains them. Fair point considering the number of religious nut jobs currently on the side of the good guys.

LatvjuAvs3• 13 years ago

Do not worry my friend, they are creative bunch, and they have came up with great tools to distribute around for civilian needs.

There is no better way to say hello than leaving these in civilian buildings after leaving area, and wiring them up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

vellum2• 13 years ago

The Saudis have started shipping them Croatian weapons, like shoulder-fired rockets. The NY Times speculates that it's being done with tacit American support.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/world/middleeast/in-shift-...

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

This photo montage is a bit misleading, because it's about improvised weapons, and so doesn't show the conventional weapons the rebels do have. And they have an impressive amount. Significant quantities of small arms, RPGs, mortars, even tanks, and other weapons. There are plenty of videos on youtube of Syrian rebels taking out tanks of regime forces using ATGMs.

trotsky• 13 years ago

The more you read actual journalism about the conflict the more you'd wonder exactly how the rebels have broadly deployed encrypted frequency hopping radios, high end western .50 cal sniper rifles with spotting equipment, shoulder fired emissions seeking anti-aircraft missiles, vehicle mounted 40mm AA, and daily arial based wide area photography.

And if you went as far as chatting up some folks that had recently been in syria, you might wonder why they'd say it's not uncommon to see a fair amount of guys with short blond hair and high end tactical clothing "advising" syrian rebel rear echelon types.

huhtenberg• 13 years ago

Beautiful photos, good lighting, great casting... what's not to like. They still missed one "rebel" in flip-flops, must've missed the memo from the Lebanon crew. Though he's technically working on a secret factory, so I guess it doesn't count.

(edit) For those downvoting - you can't be in combat and wear flip-flops. Ask your favorite person who's been to the military service. If you are in flip-flops and holding a gun or throwing a grenade, then you are an actor re-enacting fighting in a staged photoshoot.

unimpressive3• 13 years ago

Theres five photos of people in flip flops. With more than one in a combat position.

Can we at least put some effort into the conspiracy theories?

EDIT: Actually six, 14, on the right in 18, 21, 33, 34, 35.

edraferi4• 13 years ago

Dude, have you ever seen footwear in the third world? There's a lot of people out there who are lucky not to be barefoot. People don't wear flip flops in combat by choice, but many don't have a choice.

LatvjuAvs3• 13 years ago

No flip-flops indeed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Usually all dead terrorists encountered in Syria do not wear flip-flops. Even live ones.

guard-of-terra• 13 years ago

This reminds me of: http://grossfater-m.livejournal.com/1113851.html (Not related to any rebels, but it's claimed to be a real device)

danso• 13 years ago

The Atlantic did this same feature with Libya 2 years ago http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/06/diy-weapons-of-th...

Here's a great post about how an Afghan refurbished a PKM machine gun: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/afghan-gun-locker-...

chewxy• 13 years ago

I know I sound fairly like a white imperialist bearing the burden and all that, but bear with me.

We (i.e. first world countries) created really fantastic consumer devices for our daily lives. #30 showed a Samsung Galaxy S3 being used as a guidance tool for a missile. Do we have a moral obligation on the carnage brought about by our devices?

Yes I am aware that you can hack anything into weapons, given the breadth of human ingenuity, but does anyone else here feel a little morally obligated that these technologies are being used for targeted mass destruction?

(that said, I'm really impressed by the S3 being used... as well as the pirated PS3 controller being used to control a machine gun)

elemeno• 13 years ago

From the caption, it looks like the S3 was just being used as a compass. It's a strange state of affairs when, in what's effectively a war zone, it's easier to use the compass in your phone than a real physical compass!

edraferi4• 13 years ago

I also found that picture very interesting. The juxtaposition of technology is striking.

It is generous to call an improvised set of rocket tubes "targeted" and the small conventional explosive payloads of those rockets falls far below the bar for "mass destruction."

Technology is fundamentally neutral. Higher technology means better tools. Better tools are greater multipliers of people power. It's up the person to decide how to use the tools.

Sometimes we are responsible for death via technology transfer. America's support to the Afghan Mujaheddin against the Soviet Union is a great example. There's no question that Soviet helicopters blew up as a direct result of American-supplied stingers. That particular case was a clear action by the US, and in the end a very effective one (US clearly won that round of the Cold War).

The real tragedy here is that the Galaxy S3 is civilian technology. The tragedy is that part of the world conceived, designed, built and deployed that gadget to millions of people to make their lives better. Another part of the world has been thrown down to a lower level of civilization by a horrible war. They're not building the S3, they're not even using it to check their email at a coffee shop. They're bolting it onto a hobby shop of explosives to kill their fellow countrymen.

If there is a moral obligation here, it's a geopolitical one, not a technological one.

fmavituna• 13 years ago

> We (i.e. first world countries) created really fantastic consumer devices for our daily lives. #30 showed a Samsung Galaxy S3 being used as a guidance tool for a missile. Do we have a moral obligation on the carnage brought about by our devices?

I think the first world countries got a bigger problem with carnage they've been bringing the world DIRECTLY.

There is a moral obligation for us (UK here) due allowing our governments to do this and indirectly support them by our taxes.

mauvehaus2• 13 years ago

Does Toyota have blood on its hands for manufacturing pickup trucks? Are the people put machine guns in the back balanced by the people using identical pickups to deliver aid? What about all the pickups that people use going about their day to day lives? Some of the people using trucks in their daily lives are no doubt able to raise their standard of living by using the truck to carry more material more effectively than they could without.

I won't go so far as to call all technology inherently neutral (machine guns and nerve gas being just two examples I'd be pressed to find much neutrality in), but cell phones, like pickup trucks are about as neutral as you're likely to find. Globally, for every person using their Galaxy S3 to target missiles, there are probably a comparable number using a similar phone to coordinate medical or material relief efforts and tens or hundreds of people just using their phones as they go about their lives, many of whom benefit materially from the ability to contact other people or look up information online at their convenience.

And if you aren't convinced of the neutrality of pickups and cell phones, what about the companies that made: 1) the pot the guy is stirring explosives in? 2) the lathe they're turning missiles on? 3) the ladder that got incorporated into the slingshot? 4) the glass beverage bottles that have become Molotov cocktails? 5) the steel pipe and sheet steel that show up in weapons in half the pictures? Do they/we all have a moral obligation on the carnage brought about by these things?

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

I started typing up something about technology and morality but I thought better about it, I'll take a different tack.

Your post is racist. Now, I'm going to assume that it is not intentionally racist, but it has the same ultimate effect.

Let me explain.

There are many different types of prejudice. There is prejudicial hatred, that tends to be obvious and blatant but is also people's stereotypical example of the sort of prejudice that we should all fight against. There's also something that people call "the soft bigotry of low expectations", and this is also pretty bad. It manifests itself in forms such as "well, that's pretty good... for a girl" or "for an Indian" or what-have-you. This is a pernicious sort of prejudice because it affects how people are treated, what sorts of opportunities people have, etc. But for the perpetrators of it can feel more justified and less morally wrong than more blatant racism.

But there's a semi-related form of prejudice which I'll call paternalism. It's where you remove agency and culpability from certain folks and rest responsibility in the hands of "more developed" people. This is even more pernicious than low expectations because it sort of feels like you're doing the victims a favor. By taking away moral responsibility and devolving it on oneself it may seem like you are accepting a burden for someone else. But in reality you are denying them agency, denying them responsibility, and diminishing them as people. All human beings are responsible for their own actions, and to treat them like children or animals by denying them the responsibility for their deeds is incredibly dehumanizing.

So to answer your question, no, the makers of the Samsung Galaxy do not have a moral obligation for creating a device which can serve as a compass, even though a compass can be used to point a weapon. That responsibility lies with, and should never be removed from, the individual who uses the device.

benjlang• 13 years ago

I'm just hoping that once this conflict ends eventually all of these bombs, rockets etc. won't be used to attack other countries in the region (i.e. Israel)

stef252• 13 years ago

Incredible ...

vellum2• 13 years ago

Doubt it. They're getting a lot of weapons from other countries that have just had civil wars, like Iraq and Libya. When this is over, the weapons will probably make their way to the next country undergoing an Arab Spring movement.

nasir2• 13 years ago

Photo #20 impresses me as it can be used as a real gun controller real game play. I wonder if it is every going to be used. Seems scary

chillax• 13 years ago

(professional) Systems like that are already in use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CROWS

nasir2• 13 years ago

The battle is really turning into a game!

cpursley• 13 years ago

Notice the trend with the revolution photojournalism? Toyota pickup trucks. There's a reason my beat-up Tacoma pickup has the nickname 'Taco Jihad' - key ingredient to uprisings.

po• 13 years ago

It has definitely become a reliable form of light cavalry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Hilux#Reputation

IgorPartola• 13 years ago

As discussed on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1794419

jt2190• 13 years ago

These types of vehicles are now widely referred to as "technicals":

  > Africa, says [David] Kilcullen, is where the truck got its
  > nickname as a fighting vehicle, “the technical.” “When
  > [nongovernmental organizations] and the U.N. first went into
  > Somalia,” he says, referring to a period in the 1990s, “they
  > were not able to bring their own guards. So they got so-called 
  > ‘technical assistance grants’ to hire guards and drivers on
  > the ground. Over time, a ‘technical’ came to mean a vehicle
  > owned by a guard company, and then eventually to mean a Hilux
  > with a heavy weapon mounted on the back.” [1]

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/10/14/why-rebel-g...

Xylakant• 13 years ago

I don't know about syria, but in large parts of southern africa (botswana, mozambique, ...) Toyota Hilux and Isuzu pickups have a large share of the car market. They're sturdy, hard to kill and every mechanic knows the cars. I literally had a mechanic rewire the engine of our Isuzu on a bush road after large parts of the wire harness ended up wrapped around the drive train. Took him like two hours but not a single look in the tech manual.

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

Trend? This is decades old. In Somalia in the 90s they were called "technicals". And the Chadian-Libyan conflict in the 80s has been dubbed the "Toyota War".

davidw2• 13 years ago

War is a very good negative example of the fact that the economy is not zero-sum. Think if all this work - as well as that of the other side - and inventiveness were going towards productive pursuits, rather than blowing up other people and their things. Most everyone would be far better off.

kennon• 13 years ago

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

"This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

--eisenhower, 1953

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech

ctdonath3• 13 years ago

In this instance, the alternative is brutal oppression. They're better off rebelling than not.

ETA: Of course it'd be better if both sides went about things peacefully and democratically. To parent's point (now better understood hence ETA), the situation is the consequence of governmental leadership viewing socioeconomy as "zero-sum", and the oppressed taking extreme & desperate steps to eliminate the "zero-sum" restriction.

davidw2• 13 years ago

Most likely. Note that I also said "the other side". If both sides went about things peacefully and democratically, they'd all be better off on average.

adnam• 13 years ago

War propaganda now top post on HN.

Edit: if you are also dismayed, use this link to find people who want to show something new to the community:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22show+hn%...

digitalengineer2• 13 years ago

Agreed. Made 'custom' for the tech crowd. Almost every image is accompanied by the words "A Free Syrian Army fighter ..." because you know, without those words we might confuse them with terrorists or guys from Palestine fighting Israel.

Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe the people of Syria have a right for their own freedom, but it is striking how selective our news is. Ben Ali, the dictator from Tunis was supported by the West for 23 years, as was his neighbor the dictator from Egypt, as is Saudi Arabia, hell even Saddam was.

It's not just a war over there. There's a war for your minds as well. Reminds me of the famous "incubator story" where Iraqi soldiers stole incubators from hospitals in Kuwait and left the premature babies to die on the floor. Never happened, but was crucial for the public opinion in the West. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_(testimony)

nayefc5• 13 years ago

This article is proof to how controlled, biased and disgusting media in America is.

muriithi• 13 years ago

I read the article because I found the ingenuity of fabricating their own weapons interesting.

It has nothing to do with their ideology of beliefs.

unimpressive3• 13 years ago

Full Disclosure: I upvoted this article.

On the one hand, it's pretty obviously trying to appeal to this crowd. On the other hand, it actually does appeal to this crowd. I remember seeing the homemade tank in a video someone posted here a little while ago and thinking it was pretty cool. (Though at the same time skeptical of how well it could stand up to infantry, let alone another tank.)

Reddit has this same problem with PR people managing to get thinly veiled ads on the front page of Reddit or various subreddits. [0] Though partly these things make it to the front page because they are genuinely interesting. To me it boils down to a question, "Do I want to see stuff from people who have an agenda, even if I think it's pretty cool?" For me the answer is, "Yes, but only if I don't get drowned in it.".

I wouldn't mind if we acknowledged this and had an overt discussion about it.

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/hailcorporate

waps• 13 years ago

The article does somehow manage to neglect to mention the fact that these are the same party that executed dozens of people for suspected adultery (yes, suspected), and cut of hands of suspected thieves in a freaking warzone. That's the kind of government they're fighting for. It also shows just how honest they intend to be if they win.

Makes it kinda hard to choose. I may not feel to good about the alawites winning, but I feel a worse about these guys winning. I'd vote for the dictatorship, but I doubt they're taking votes. Also, everywhere else in the middle east, the same party that forms the rebels here is persecuting alawites close to the point where it can be called genocide. If the alawites/government lose this battle, they will be slaughtered to the last man.

theycallmemorty• 13 years ago

Regardless of what side they're on, these guys are fighting a war using home made technology. In #20 the guy is operating a machine gun using a playstation controller! I think many in the community here would find that interesting.

yread2• 13 years ago

For some reason you don't see a post in Atlantic glorifying palestinian rockets and mortars even though they look quite similar, I guess.

berntb4• 13 years ago

Because the main use of the Palestinian weapons are to target civilians?

mathieuh3• 13 years ago

As opposed to the NATO-backed terrorists known as the FSA? The same ones who shot down a civilan aeroplane?

senthilnayagam• 13 years ago

so if they fight govt hated by US it is rebels, but if they hate US they are terrorist

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/...

pekk6• 13 years ago

You clearly have an axe to grind against the US here.

Terrorism conventionally refers to asymmetric warfare directed strategically against soft targets, often in peacetime. Good examples include the attacks of RAF and IRA in the 70s, Timothy McVey, the Unabomber and the WTC attack in the 90s.

Syria is a war zone. It is in civil war. War has always terrorized civilians.

monochromatic2• 13 years ago

Sort of related, guys builds a AK-pattern rifle out of a shovel: http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/build-yourself/17...

sesqu• 13 years ago

To be frank, he got the mechanism, the scope and the barrel from a store. What he actually built was the scaffolding, which is still nice but more like assembling or repairing an AK than building one.

monochromatic2• 13 years ago

True enough. I was still impressed though.

mauvehaus2• 13 years ago

I suspect the fellows in the pictures could add a few new chapters to the Improvised Munitions Handbook [1] and add some refinements to the ones that are already there.

The pictures of them building mortar shells and missiles are pretty interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that turning the nosecones on a lathe is the preferred way of forming them. I mean, you'd be removing a lot of material from the outside, then turning it around and removing a lot more from the inside to make room for the contents. Does anybody know if they're usually formed from sheet metal as I had always thought, or if they're actually pretty heavy-duty for improved penetration of the target?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM_31-210_Improvised_Munition_...

jws• 13 years ago

I haven't seen mortar rounds made, but I would guess their noses are forged or formed then turned to final dimensions.†

By whatever process they are made in the large military industrial complexes, these pictures show how they are made when you can't invest in custom machines, tooling, and material. You are seeing what happens when you have a bunch of bar stock in inventory and a lathe.

It's the "I need a message queueing system and all I have is PHP" version of a mortar.

␄

† Alibaba will hook you up with Wotech Industrial to sell you forged mortar shell blanks for just such an operation: http://www.alibaba.com/suppliers/forged-mortar-shell-supplie...

Medico is a pressing company and mentions on their web page that they've made over 7 million mortar shells of various types. http://www.medicomfg.com/products.php (In the second picture of the last row, the part held in fingers, that pattern you are seeing is pressed in before the metal is formed into a cup. It provides the fragmentation pattern to get the part to break into a nice even spread of the maximum number pieces that still carry lethal energy into human flesh. Probably a 25mm OCWS round. You could set them for a distance and have them airburst just after they went in a window or over a wall. Looks like the program was canceled. Maybe precision and 4 rounds per second didn't need to intersect.)

1916 video of a press forming large mortar noses: http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675048466_manufacturing-...

snake_plissken• 13 years ago

#9...that's a trebuchet! FAVORITE SIEGE WEAPON All TIME.

belorn• 13 years ago

I wonder how safe those slingshots are. Throwing heavy objects are hard, and remembering some mythbuster shows, a bit dangerous. Have the grenade bounce, fall out of the slingshot grip, or rubber-band back and you got a big problem.

Is this actually in big use, and how common is "misfire"?

littledot5566• 13 years ago

Smoking inside a mortar factory...?

I cringe looking at that picture...

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

I agree that on its surface it is propaganda. I also think its interesting to see how people fabricate weapons in a war zone (or not). Some of them don't seem like they would actually do what the designer hoped.

In general, in this age of 'high tech' weaponry, it's amazing that rebels can go up against a modern army at all much less keep it bogged down for as long as they have.

That said, in a non abstract way the material is deeply saddening.

Gotttzsche• 13 years ago

looks like the a-team is helping the rebels

DIY Weapons of the Syrian Rebels

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