Weapons of the Cambodian Civil War
Authorized a total of 113 officers and men, the team arrived in Phnom Penh in 1971,[1] under the overall command of CINCPAC Admiral John S. McCain Jr.[2] In the early months of the War, most Cambodian Army infantry, armoured and artillery units fought the PAVN and Khmer Rouge with a mix of surplus World War II-vintage French and U.S. and modern Soviet and Chinese small-arms, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces either inherited from Khmer Royal Army stocks or delivered as emergency aid by the Americans.
[4] Besides infantry weapons, the U.S. MEDTC also provided the FANK branches with more modern U.S. military equipments, which included aircraft, armoured and transport vehicles and long-range artillery pieces, plus naval and riverine vessels.
In addition to U.S. support, the FANK received further military assistance from South Vietnam, the Kingdom of Laos,[5] Thailand, Indonesia,[6] the Philippines,[7] Singapore,[8] the Republic of China (Taiwan), Australia and New Zealand.
[11] As the war progressed, these factions were provided with modern Eastern Bloc military hardware, including semiautomatic and fully automatic small-arms, artillery pieces, armoured and transport vehicles of Soviet and Chinese origin, mostly being funnelled through the North Vietnamese.
Although the CPNLAF standardized on Soviet and Chinese weapons and equipment by the time of their first full-scale solo offensive in January 1973,[12] its guerrilla forces continued to make use of captured enemy stocks until the end of the War.
