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Lethal gunships in Iraq?

AN AIR BASE IN IRAQ: The U.S. Air Force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes — the lethal ``flying gunships'' of the Vietnam War — to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, The Associated Press has learnt.

An AP reporter saw the first of the turboprop-driven aircraft after it landed at the airfield this week. Four are expected.

The four-engine gunships, whose home base is Hurlburt Field in Florida, have operated over Iraq before, flying from airfields elsewhere in the region. In November 2004, air-to-ground fire from AC-130s supported the U.S. attack that took the western city of Fallujah from militants. Basing the planes inside Iraq will cut hours off their transit time to reach suspected targets. The left-side ports of the AC-130s, 98-ft-long planes that can slowly circle over a target for long periods, bristle with a potent arsenal — 40 mm cannon that can fire 120 rounds per minute, and big 105 mm cannon, normally a field artillery weapon.

The gunships were designed primarily for battlefield use to place saturated fire on massed troops. In Vietnam, for example, they were deployed against North Vietnamese supply convoys along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where the Air Force claimed to have destroyed 10,000 trucks over several years. The use of AC-130s in places like Fallujah, urban settings where militants may be among crowded populations of noncombatants, has been criticised by human rights groups. — AP

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