History-minded readers with strong stomachs are invited to consider the 50-year saga of the U.S. Air Force/Lockheed/Boeing AC-130 gunship–a descendant of the Vietnam War’s infamous “Puff the Magic Dragon” aircraft–which perpetually draws the furor of human rights groups around the world. Designed primarily to rake saturated fire with cannons and Gatling guns across massed battlefield troops, it has the alarming tendency nowadays to turn up on missions that are just the opposite: urban settings where insurgents may be among crowded populations of noncombatants. Hand-outs from military-industrial sources always tout this converted cargo plane’s advanced avionics and “precision” strike capabilities, a perennial boondoggle. Yesterday’s attack that killed at least 22 patients and staff at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan is only the latest in the AC-130’s record of indiscriminately blowing bystanders to smithereens (or “splashing the target” as they say in the Special Forces). Just why this old blunderbuss is still being deployed in situations that present high risk of civilian casualties, let alone in close proximity of a well-known hospital in a country already rebellious about “collateral damage” (surely one of the military’s most hideous euphemisms, right up there with “surgical firepower”) raises the specter of criminal mentality in the U.S. command passing as official procedure.
Update: All the tech in the world makes no difference if it’s broken or misused. Then it becomes a bad excuse.
Update 4/29/16: As though truth were a fool.
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precision munitions?
(l) Bofors L60, designed 1930
(r) M102 Howitzer, designed 1962