A gunship is a military aircraft whose main job is to shoot, not to ferry people from place to place. In learner dictionaries, and in a lot of news about wars since the late twentieth century, that usually means a helicopter heavy with guns, cannons, or rockets. It flies over a fight to protect other helicopters — ones that are landing soldiers or picking up the wounded — and to destroy enemy guns and vehicles on the ground. It is a forces and news word. Though actually, crews also call some fixed-wing planes gunships, especially slow, heavily armed ones that circle a target; the ship in the name is the old idea of a gun-platform, like a warship in the air, not a boat.