AC-130H Howitzer. Flickr/US Air Force. Some rights reserved.The United States air-force's assault on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on 3 October 2015 is reported to have killed twenty-two people and injured thirty-seven, with twelve staff of the aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders / MSF) among the dead. Whatever investigators discover about the exact details, the implications of the "tragic incident" (as President Obama described it) go wider than can be explained away by any technical or military error. They relate not just to recent developments in Afghanistan, but also to the evolving war in Iraq and Syria.
For a start, the attack shows how an accurate targeting-system, which is supposed to avoid civilian casualties (“collateral damage”), is dependent on the target being correctly identified. The plane used in the Kunduz hospital operation was a variant of the AC-130 gunship, itself based on the workhorse C-130 Hercules military transport that was in use during the Vietnam war. It operates by circling a target slowly at low altitude and firing its weapons sideways, aiming to be highly accurate while maintaining a sustained attack.
The plane fires 25mm and 40mm cannon and a much more powerful 105mm howitzer, the latter releasing explosive shells. Avoiding high-explosive bombs, intended to allow the steady and systematic destruction of the target, helps explain why the hospital walls were left standing. The MSF trauma centre was under attack for an hour or more with considerable precision; neighbouring buildings were scarcely touched.
