Foreign powers are hesitant to arm Libya's rebels, so the rebels are doing it themselves: throwing bits and bobs together from old Soviet-era weapons and hoping it will be enough to oust Moamer Kadhafi.

If Libya had a functioning patent office it would find rich pickings at the Rajma military installation, 30 kilometres (18 miles) east of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

Inside the fortified desert compound, a handful of weapons engineers are hard at work creating the world's newest weapons systems, but not, perhaps, its most technically advanced.

Among a graveyard of Cold War-era armoured personnel carriers, Hamed Mahloof manages to hotwire a half-century old Soviet BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle.

After a puff of smoke and few electrical sparks -- when the cannon accidentally makes contact with a hatch -- it jolts backwards and trundles into the workshop.

Mahloof, a tank mechanic for the past 32 years, now spends most days cannibalising parts from clapped-out vehicles, then using them to mend those tanks damaged on the front line.

"We have nothing, no spare parts. It's hard. We can only switch parts from one tank to another," he said.

He and the three other mechanics at Rajma have obviously been busy. All around him vehicles have been whittled away, leaving only corroded hulks to bleach in the sun.

In Mahloof's latest project he is using a gantry crane to rip out the sand-coloured turret from the BMP and replace it with a rusty but powerful anti-aircraft gun, in theory doubling the vehicle's firing range.

By the time he is finished, the BMP looks like a prop from the 1979 film "Mad Max," or the result of a strange new MTV series called "Pimp My Tank."

Mahloof said the removed cannon will eventually be put on the back of a Toyota Hilux pick up, creating another of the so-called "technicals" that have become emblematic of the Libyan war.

In an adjacent room, three men are also hard at work making home-made bazookas from bits of pipe, hand-grips from old Kalashnikovs, some tea towels and triggers from what look like old lamp switches.

In the case of Libya's rebels, necessity really is the mother of innovation.

While NATO has tipped the air war decisively in their favour, on the ground they are outmatched by the superior firepower of Kadhafi's forces.

"The new equipment (Kadhafi) took to the west before February 17," said rebel colonel Ahmed Omar Bani.

With the conflict mired in a bloody stalemate, the rebels hope foreign allies will now step in, providing new arms, training and communications systems.

But while the allied forces have supplied rebels with some non-lethal equipment, there has been a reluctance to transport large quantities of weapons after experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mahloof said he hopes for new weapons soon, but if they do not come he will still work "24 hours a day."

In the process, he will no doubt create some more weapons that have never been seen before.

Tweet

Related Links The latest in Military Technology for the 21st century at SpaceWar.com