During the dry season, the countryside was covered with agricultural burns and ever-present livestock. Year-round weather conditions limited intelligence collection efforts. Essentially, anytime an AC-130 was overhead, the guerrilla forces remained hidden and became tactically insignificant. The BLUE FLAME missions continued in 1986 and the guerrillas became more proficient at avoiding detection. FMLN guerrillas were aware that being spotted by the AC-130 would certainly be followed by an attack by the El Salvadoran Army. This lash-up worked very effectively especially with the US-trained battalions and the Salvadorantrained, anti-terrorist, Ponce battalion. Once individuals were spotted, gunship crews reported activity to Jittery Prop or Carrot Top who would advise the Salvadoran Army. During high-moon illumination conditions, personnel were easy to spot with both low light level television (LLTV) and IR sensors. Concealment from the gunship in open terrain was futile since hot spots were easy to detect on the infrared (IR) sensor. As a result of the revelation, the guerrillas sought cover whenever they heard a gunship approaching overhead. After its introduction on the AC-130E Pave Aegis gunship in 1972, the airborne 105mm howitzer proved itself to be both particularly deadly and accurate.When the AC-130 connection to BIELD KIRK was revealed, the mission continued under a different code name BLUE FLAME. An 105mm high-explosive round costs approximately $400, while a Hellfire missile can cost up to $100,000, depending on the variant.įrom the Vietnam War onward, well-trained gunship crews repeatedly demonstrated their ability to destroy relatively small enemy concentrations while leaving the surrounding areas untouched, even in densely packed urban areas. And cannon shells and artillery rounds are just cheaper than precision guided munitions. As it stands now, the AC-130W's wing pylons can only carry eight SDBs or Hellfires, though crews can reload the aircraft's Griffin missile launcher in flight. With a gun, crews could shift their focus to new targets much faster than with missiles or bombs and lay down a much higher volume of fire, too. Historically, the benefit of the side-firing gunship concept has been the aircraft’s ability to fire very precisely at specific points on the ground.
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