Syrian rebels build homemade tank, deserve award for best Do It Yourself ever

Ashraf December 10, 2012 6

Look at the above image. If you think it is of someone playing Call of Duty, you would be wrong. Rather, the above is an image of the targeting system for the Sham II, a homemade tank constructed by rebels in Syria. Yeah, you read that properly. Outgunned by the Syrian Army, the rebels have resorted to building their own weapons. In this case, a tank.

The Sham II is built using the chassis of a car (it isn’t clear exactly what car) and has a mounted machine gun controlled by a video game controller from inside the tank. There appears to be two LCDs inside the tank, one LCD feeding sight to the driver of the tank while the other LCD giving sight to the gunner. The following video gives a demo:

How well the Sham II will do against al-Assad’s real tanks is unclear (my guess is not very well), but I’m sure it beats the heck out of unarmored trucks.

[via The Verge]

TAGS » Tanks, Technology

POSTED IN » Miscellaneous

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Happily married to the most beautiful woman ever, Ashraf is the founder of dotTech. Ashraf spends insane hours on dotTech (usually writing articles but sometimes doing absolutely nothing except staring). Yes he is weird, but he is also very friendly.

6 Comments »

Frank December 10, 2012 at 1:12 AM (comment permalink) -

….never forget that the ‘Syrian rebels’ in fact are just terrorists.
I want to see good old USAs reaction if GUS or Iran or Syria would arm and actively support militia in USA and tried to unite them to skip the repressive government.

P.S. Nice, neutral (if not pro-US) article, BTW: http://www.defencejournal.com/dec98/militia.htm

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Tom December 10, 2012 at 5:18 AM (comment permalink) -

I want one.

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Col. Panek December 10, 2012 at 6:47 AM (comment permalink) -

Hope to see the complete build instructions on instructables.com.

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riya December 10, 2012 at 7:12 AM (comment permalink) -

Is it really possible to build that..? I just wish the innocent syrian citizens get peace and get out of this mess very soon :(

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jayesstee December 10, 2012 at 12:40 PM (comment permalink) -

@Tom: Me too! Just the vehicle for the supermarket car park.

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Grantwhy December 10, 2012 at 6:02 PM (comment permalink) -

The remote control machine gun is clever, but I doubt the armour will stand up to much more that light arms.

It looks like the Sham II is intended to be a support unit for infantry vs infantry fighting. Unfortunately, the moment one of those enemy infantry turn up with something like a RPG (or even a heavy machine gun?) the Sham II’s life will be over.

ps: to any media that might be reading this, It’s a light armoured car, *NOT* a tank (the wheels are a dead giveaway :p).

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