The record What this system is, where it comes from, who operates it and which of Vigil’s modules it is relevant to — with the evidence each of those rests on.
Record
Conflict relevance
This is the catalogue's single record for this system. It is relevant to the module below; each module's Force Atlas shows how it is used there.
Operators
Malian Armed Forces (FAMa): Also documented in armed-group hands on captured technicals. · JNIM: Captured pieces mounted on pickups appear in the group's own footage of its 2023–2026 attacks; no count recorded. · Azawad Liberation Front (FLA): Mounted on technicals in the northern columns; captured from state stocks or inherited from the 2012 rebellion's arsenals.
Battlefield role
The Sahel war's heavy weapon of choice: truck-mounted ZU-23-2s give both army columns and insurgent raids their heaviest direct fire. With no air threat to engage, the type's meaning in this conflict is entirely ground combat.
Typical employment
Mounted on a pickup as the heavy weapon of a column: suppression of positions and vehicles at a range machine guns cannot reach, and the weapon most often cited in the raiding and convoy engagements the module records.
How the system is commonly used, at the level of published analysis — never a procedure, a loadout or an engagement envelope.
Strengths
A high rate of fire from two 23 mm barrels, light enough to tow behind or bolt onto a pickup, and simple enough to keep firing without a supply chain; ammunition is among the most widely traded in the region.
Limitations
Unstabilised area fire, indiscriminate at range; documented in armed-group hands on captured technicals — the standard route by which state stocks circulate into insurgent arsenals. No use against aircraft is documented in this conflict, and the drone threat that has grown since 2023 is one it cannot engage.
Typically used alongside
- Technicals (armed pickups)Confidence: High
The pickup is the carriage: the gun's meaning in this war is as the heaviest weapon a technical carries.
Visual identification
Two long thin barrels side by side on a small two-wheeled carriage with a gunner's seat behind; when truck-mounted, the carriage is bolted to the bed of a pickup with the wheels removed.
Documented conflict use
Documented on army technicals in intervention columns and on captured pickups in JNIM and FLA footage from the 2012 rebellion to the 2026 offensives; appears in ACLED-coded engagements on both sides. No employment against aircraft or drones is documented.
Branch & service operators
- Malian Army (Armée de Terre) Documented
Assessed as of — 2026-01 Last reviewed — 2026-09-28