Technicals, Gun Trucks and other Improvised Armed Vehicles faded out of American use after Vietnam due to them no longer being required, but came back in considerable numbers later as the same circumstances of guerrilla fighting meant they were needed again during the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan.

"Unwittingly, most of the transportation units in Iraq were reinventing the wheel. They walked step-by-step along the same path gun-truck designers had nearly four decades before them. The solution that developed out of Iraq had roots reaching far back into history. With the exception of the Vietnam veterans still serving in the National Guard and Reserve companies, and a few of the soldiers who happened to visit the Transportation Corps Museum, most currently in Iraq do not know the US Army has faced a similar threat before and defeated it." (1)

 

It was in the early 2000’s due to these wars that a more permanent replacement of the gun truck technical was being designed. These vehicles were MRAPs, or Mine Resistant Armoured Vehicles, and are a modern development based on up-armoured cars and trucks that first saw development in South Africa in the 1980’s, but rose to prominence and greater development after the Iraq and Afghanistan experience of Gun Trucks' and other armoured convoy vehicle's performance being superior in comparison to unarmoured transport and support vehicles against threats such as rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) and led to their increasing mass adoption internationally as protected convoy vehicles, almost wholly supplanting the role of the improvised gun truck within conventional military forces apart from specialist roles like Special Operation Forces / SOF and other similar roles, where they have remained in limited use, usually as long range scouting vehicles based on stripped down and lightened conventional vehicles. (2)

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