Insurgency weapons and tactics
One type of insurgency weapon are "homemade" firearms made by non-professionals, such as the Błyskawica (Lightning) submachine gun produced in underground workshops by the Polish resistance movement.
A fairly recent class of firearms, purpose-designed insurgency weapons first appeared during World War II, in the form of such arms as the FP-45 Liberator and the Sten submachine gun.
Tubular steel in standard sizes is also used when possible, and barrels (one of the few firearm parts that require fine tolerances and high strength) may be rifled (like the Sten) or left smoothbore (like the FP-45).
The CIA Deer gun of the 1960s was similar to the Liberator, but used an aluminum casting for the body of the pistol, and was chambered in 9×19 mm Parabellum, one of the all-time most common handgun cartridges in the world.
[4] Special efforts were also made to capture weapons from the Axis, such as raids were conducted on trains and vehicles carrying equipment to the front, as well as on guardhouses and gendarmerie posts, that proved highly successful.
During the Warsaw Uprising, the Polish Armia Krajowa (AK, Home Army) even managed to capture several German armored vehicles, most notably a Jagdpanzer 38 Hetzer light tank destroyer renamed "Chwat" and an Sd.Kfz.
The Błyskawica (Lightning) was a simple submachine gun produced by the Armia Krajowa, or Home Army, a Polish resistance movement fighting the Germans in occupied Poland.
For example, the sheer number of AKM (an upgraded version of the AK-47 rifle) manufacturers and users in the world means that governments can supply these weapons to insurgents with plausible deniability as to exactly from where and from whom the guns were acquired.
Roadside bombs were also extensively used; they were typically placed in a drain or culvert along a rural road and detonated by remote control when British security forces vehicles were passing.
[13] These devices were usually command-detonated using an electrical command wire and hidden in sewer lines, piles of trash, destroyed vehicles, or placed directly on or under the surface or shoulder of a road, as well in trees or hillsides.
To counter increasing armor protection, the insurgents have also developed IEDs that make use of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs); these are essentially cylindrical shaped charges usually constructed with a machined concave metal disc (often copper) facing the target, pointed inward.
Commonly positions for IEDs include on utility poles, road signs or trees, buried underground or in piles of garbage, disguised as rocks or bricks, and even inside dead animals.
This initially resulted in heavy South African military and police casualties, as the vast distances of road network vulnerable to insurgent sappers every day made comprehensive detection and clearance efforts impractical.
Tank columns were eventually protected by attached self-propelled anti-aircraft guns (ZSU-23-4 Shilka, 9K22 Tunguska) used in the ground role to suppress and destroy Chechen ambushes.
In Afghanistan, the Mujahideen often modified RPGs for use against Soviet helicopters by adding a curved pipe to the rear of the launcher tube, which diverted the backblast, allowing the RPG to be fired upward at aircraft from a prone position.
The Mujahideen also utilized the 4.5-second timer on RPG rounds to make the weapon function as part of a flak battery, using multiple launchers to increase hit probabilities.
In response, the Mujahideen prepared dug-in firing positions with top cover, and again, Soviet forces altered their tactics by using air-dropped thermobaric fuel-air bombs on such landing zones.
The first of these weapons were made in 2012 by the Islamist Ahrar al-Shamal Brigade in the Idlib Governorate around the city of Binnish before the manufacturing was moved to Aleppo by the Free Syrian Army's 16th Division which also appropriated the design.
One important feature of the ambush was that the target units should 'pile up' after being attacked, thus preventing them any easy means of withdrawal from the kill zone and hindering their use of heavy weapons and supporting airstrikes and artillery fire.
Members of the military have also been kidnapped for propaganda purposes, or to hold them hostage in order to receive supplies and funding, or the release of insurgent prisoners[citation needed].
This is doubly so if insurgents are seen as bringing order in failed regimes, ones with weak central control, and ones in which the security forces are as bad as would be thieves and bandits[citation needed].
Sabotage was used extensively by resistance movements during the Second World War as a way of aiding the Allies by attacking Axis supply lines in occupied territories in Nazi-occupied Europe and the Japanese-occupied Pacific.
Most of their efforts were centered around crippling Malaya's colonial economy and involved sabotage against trains, railway bridges, rubber trees, water pipes, electric lines and military camps.
They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, such as cutting power lines, knocking out pipelines and radio stations, blowing bridges, closing major roads, attacking convoys, disrupting the electric power system and industrial production, bombing government office buildings, air terminals, hotels and cinemas, and attacking police stations and Soviet military installations and air bases.
During the Contras insurgency following the Nicaraguan Revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency developed The Freedom Fighter's Manual, a fifteen-page propaganda booklet that was airdropped over Nicaragua in 1983, which explained numerous sabotage methods by which the average citizen could cause civil disorder and disruption.
Snipers have historically been used by insurgents as a method of psychological warfare and attrition in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Vietnam and Northern Ireland, including mobile units transported in vehicles.
Insurgents in Iraq have used snipers, including vehicle-borne units, to isolate enemy combatants from larger forces and strike at officers and commander—a demonstration of their technological capabilities and tactical patience.
Although crude and reliant on the expenditure of personnel, they have proven remarkably effective at causing significant damage and spreading terror in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq in which they are deployed, becoming a primary tactic of many insurgent groups in these regions.
Suicide bombing as a military tactic was pioneered by Hezbollah, a Shia Jihadist militant group and political party that originated during the Lebanese Civil War as a resistance movement against Israel and its allies during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
The youngest Palestinian suicide bomber was 16-year-old Issa Bdeir, a high school student from the village of Al Doha, who shocked his friends and family when he blew himself up in a park in Rishon LeZion, killing a teenage boy and an elderly man.
