US General: "Iraq Can Expect More Bombings". posted by Richard Seymour

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

The Iraq-based Special Forces command controlling the AC-130s, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, said it would have no comment on the deployment.

But the plan's general outline was confirmed by other Air Force officers, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject.

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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 Falluja, urban settings where resistance fighters may be among crowded populations of noncombatants, has been criticised by human rights groups.

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"It's got tonnes of guns, and it's got all kinds of stuff on it that can be applied to the problems you have," Brigadier General Frank Gorenc, who refused to discuss the current AC-130 deployment, said in an AP interview.

That "stuff" includes "the ability to take these high-tech pods and to use them to find guys planting (bombs) and to find other nefarious activity," he said.

The Predator drone - the MQ-1 unmanned aerial vehicle - has been a reconnaissance workhorse in Iraq, but air force officers say they do not have enough to meet demand for missions.

The fiscal 2007 Defence Department budget proposed last month by the Bush administration envisions spending $1.6 billion on additional reconnaissance drones.