ISIS captured thousands of US Humvees from the Iraqi Army when they captured Mosul last year.
The Islamic State captured 2,300 humvees when they captured Mosul in 2014.
The estimated cost of the equipment was $579 million.
ISIS moved a truckload of captured US Humvees out of Iraq to Syria after they captured Mosul.
Today ISIS is using the modified trucks and humvees as VBEDs — or vehicle-borne explosive devices. The daesh is loading bombs on the vehicles and ramming them into Kurdish forces.
The Washington Times reported:
Gen. Dedawa Khurshid, a commander of the Kurdish peshmerga forces battling the Islamic State militants, faces a unique terrorist-style of warfare on a daily basis.
“Daesh modifies trucks and bulldozers by welding steel all over them,” said Gen. Khurshid, using the Arabic term for the jihadi Islamic State, which now controls large swaths of Iraq and Syria. “Then they take high explosives and mount them in a special way on the front of the vehicles. A man will then take the vehicle and drive into our line and detonate it.”
Called VBEDs — or vehicle-borne explosive devices, as opposed to the far better known IEDs, or improvised explosive devices designed to function like booby traps or land mines — the trucks typically carry about 550 pounds of explosives that can injure and kill soldiers within a radius of less than 900 yards when detonated, the general said.
Islamic State militants often use U.S. military Humvees or bulldozers and other construction equipment seized as spoils of war. Recycling the vehicles for use on the battlefield is a sign that the militants are facing stiffer opposition from Kurdish forces than from the Iraqi troops they easily defeated last year when they took over much of northern Iraq.
“While ISIS has used suicide vehicles in the past, the modification of cars and tractors to attack on the front line like this is a new development,” said retired Col. Chris Kilford, a lecturer at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto and a former military attache at the Canadian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. “It’s an adaptation to the forces Daesh are facing.
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