Unconventional or " off label " use of modern [ post 1945] weapons

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Dixie Station, 1965
What an absolutely great photo! Photo shop? or did some wag actually pull this off...
 
CIWS against smuggler and terrorist boats. is that a " off label " use ?
Given the historical of anti-aircraft weapons against smal craft probably not. Maybe using anti-torpedo boat guns against aircraft in WW1?

Interestingly CIWS systems have great versatility; useful against aerial, surface and (with supercav ammunition) against subsurface targets.
 
This has happened quite often in the Syrian Civil War. ATGMs, especially TOWs and Kornets have been used to take out huddled groups of enemy personnel in many cases. Rebel groups always record their launches so the video footage of this is really easy to find on YouTube.

There were even three of four instances of Free Syrian Army using TOWs to take out parked fighter jets, a parked helicopter, and once a helicopter that had just landed.
 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamburak

Is there a modern equivalent of this ? I mean in some areas camels and mules offer a lot more mobility than a Toyota, and fitting a MG or a light cannon on it might not be a bad idea

There actually is! Motorcycle-mounted heavy machineguns have started to pop up in Syria. As the US/coalition got aggressive about blowing up ISIL technicals, they moved away from using pickup trucks to a dushka mounted on the rear of a motorcycle with an attached brace on the side- the driver rides up, dismounts, fires, then jumps back on. ISIL started it, and the YPG has taken up the machinegun motorcycle as a way to make heavy weapons survivable in the face of an enemy with precision airpower.

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Also this whole thread could just be a thread about the Houthis. There isn't a rigged or re purposed weapon they haven't loved. Using S-75 SAMs as surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, using AA-8 air to air IR missiles as surface-to-air missiles, ripping the antiship missile launchers off Yemeni navy ships and converting them to mobile land based launchers, cutting two Scuds in half and welding the fuel tanks back together to get extended range, and this doesn't even begin to cover their improvised land fighting vehicles, remote-controlled suicide speedboats, or drones.

I think the dynamic behind it is this: a rough third of the Yemeni military defected to the Houthis. They had a lot of obsolete conventional weapons but knew they would never survive in the face of Saudi and UAE airpower, so they just stripped all the parts they could and got creative. I think it's the presence of lots of military hardware floating around + a sudden asymmetric threat that leads to a lot of these rigged up weapons.

That same dynamic is also why what might be the 20th century's biggest relative haul of captured non-standard equipment- North Vietnam's inheritance of huge quantities of US-built kit after the fall of Saigon- never resulted in any field-rigged battlewagons. They got enough A-37s, M113s, Hueys, and F-5s to just.....use them. Conventionally. Against threats they expected (the Khmer Rouge and China).
 

Khanzeer

Banned
^^^ can you share any sources in english which describe or have photos of houthis improvised weapons? Most I found are in arabic unfortunately
 
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