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Malian Insurgents associated with ISIS prepare for a raid
Part 1: The Dream of the Motorcycle Warlords
[Roop] Hey Sarge what’s the form on this thing?
[Sarge] Twisto-bikey. A scoot-jockey. A few hours ago down in Sun-City he goes berserk. Breaks custody, kills a young primary, takes off in a pursuit special. We’ve been on him ever since. This one’s run off the air Roop. I’ve seen the style before: Terminal Psychotic.
-MAD MAX, dir. George Miller (1978)
Recently some friends and I were discussing a Twitter thread ( follow me @FromKulak) that had cropped up. The author of the thread speculated that the advent of cheap drone based bombs was fast rendering armoured vehicles obsolete. Armenia took extraordinary casualties to their tanks, vehicles, artillery, and logistics from Azerbaijani drone strikes and Drone guided artillery in the recent Nargorno Karabakh war. Even ISIS and Iraqi Militia now regularly deploy commercial drones modded out to either explode themselves or drop mortar shells on armored vehicles with incredible success (the distribution of armour on most vehicles favouring the sides and front meaning that an explosion directly above bypasses most protection).
So the Author presents a solution already being deployed by militias and irregulars from Africa to Afghanistan: Motorcycles.
Lets take a deeper look a motorcycles in warfare, why they are so prominent in insurgent movements, and why despite their usefulness (and coolness) western forces still use them only sparingly.