Technicals have also been referred to as battlewagons and gunwagons. However, an alternative account is given by Michael Maren, who says the term was first used in Somalia in the 1980s, after engineers from Soviet arms manufacturer Tekniko mounted weapons on vehicles for the Somali National Movement during the Somaliland War of Independence. Eventually the term broadened to include any vehicle carrying armed men. Barred from bringing in private security, non-governmental organizations hired local gunmen to protect their personnel, using money defined as 'technical assistance grants'.

The neologism technical describing such a vehicle is believed to have originated in Somalia during the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s. A Zhongxing Grand Tiger technical with a mounted FN MAG during the First Libyan Civil WarĪ technical, officially a non-standard tactical vehicle ( NSTV) in United States military parlance, is a light improvised fighting vehicle, typically an open-backed civilian pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle, mounting a machine gun, anti-aircraft autocannon, rotary cannon, anti-tank weapon, anti-tank gun, ATGM, mortar, multiple rocket launcher, recoilless rifle, or other support weapon (somewhat like a light military gun truck or potentially even a self-propelled gun).

The us military buys tanks from toyata