My son is working in Brussels as a (civil) aviation engineer.  So everything that has something to do with something that possible can fly takes my attention ( or sometimes distracts me).
Last december I did read a report from Dahr Jamail about the under-reported air war.

Yesterday AP, by the same reporter who broke the story of Vietnam's My Lai massacre,  came with the message that the US is moving some of his C-130 gunschips to Iraq.  With the ongoing pressure on Bush to bring back home the troops, the military is shifting to more and heavier weaponry.  No more soldiers needed : now it is " dead from above".

                     

The AC-130H is produced at a cost of $132.4 million U.S. Dollars, and the AC-130U is produced at a cost of $190 million U.S. Dollars (fiscal 2001 constant dollars). Currently there are eight AC-130H and thirteen AC-130U aircraft in active duty service.

The fire control system offers a Dual Target Attack capability, whereby two targets up to one kilometer apart can be simultaneously engaged by two different sensors, using two different guns. No other air-ground attack platform in the world offers this capability.

               

The above is the cone of fire created by tracers from a gunship attacking targets in Vietnam. The canons from today give a more dense patern.

For those interested in more detail Google for C-130 and you get more links than than you ever can read.

What is it for society that can mobilise money, people and traing for them, engineers and designers, pilots , all sorts of operators to deploy such killing machines?

Bonus photo added to diary by DoDo: photo from the comments with changed URL