Weapon of choice: technology upgrades give edge to ground-attack pilots.

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DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. -- When he flew combat missions in Afghanistan in 2004, Maj. Neal Kistler lugged two sacks of maps into the cockpit of his A-10 and used a red grease pencil to notate the locations of enemy artillery while in flight. Before he could drop a bomb, he had to flip a number of switches, triple check their settings and then reset them after deployment to correct the bomb's trajectory.

Those analog ways of doing business are to be expected aboard a warplane that was designed in the 1970s as the Air Force's sole ground-attack jet. Only in the past two years have A-10 pilots moved into the digital age with the Thunderbolt II, which has become the weapon of choice for ground units pinned down by enemy fire.

Along with a wing replacement program, the interior of the aircraft is being updated with new digital cockpit displays, improved flight controller sticks and throttles and reconfigured control panels. Advanced targeting pods will give pilots better tools to conduct surveillance and accurately deploy weapons. Finally, the airplanes will be able to accept targeting information digitally and send text messages to the ground.

"The integration of these systems is going to change the way we fight--dramatically improve the way we fight," says Col. Kent Laughbaum, commander of the 355th Fighter Wing, which has been flying the airplane since the Cold War. "The airframe is an old airframe, but with these advancements, we anticipate flying for another 20 years."

The upgrades are arriving at an opportune time. The A-10s have been flying in support of troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the beginning of the conflicts, when the Air Force conducted interdiction operations and pre-planned most of its targeting missions, officials say. But the nature of the wars has changed. Insurgents have dispersed into populated areas to make it more difficult for U.S. forces to find them. Such tactics require troops and warplanes to conduct more intelligence operations to track them down. Once the enemy is found, commanders must determine how best to handle the situation without harming non-combatants.

Pilots insist that their primary mission of close-air support has not changed despite the battlefield transitioning to the urban environment where insurgents exploit the civilian population to shield their activities.

The basics of the mission--knowing the exact locations of friendly forces, pinpointing the enemy and coordinating with an airman on the ground to support troops with weapons or non-kinetics--are still the same.

"What has changed is our ability to do those basics precisely," says Laughbaum, who began his career in the A-10A, but spent the bulk of his flying years in the F-15E. Still, he is a fierce supporter of the aircraft, fondly called the "Warthog" by its operators and by ground forces whose lives it has saved. "I have story after story upon story of A-10s coming at the point of contact and tipping the balance to victory," he says.

The technology upgrades in the A-10C will improve the air-ground coordination necessary for conducting close-air support missions, the wing's pilots say. More crucially, they will help the pilots succeed in the urban environment, where they worry about non-combatants whom they cannot see inside buildings.

"There could be a family in there sleeping. You just don't know. Information relay is just crucial," says Capt. Matthew Harmon, weapons officer for the 354th Fighter Squadron.

Many times, A-10 pilots who are called to support ground troops scramble to their jets without knowing the details of their mission.

"Until you start talking to the guy that's actually there, and probably getting shot at, you won't know the full extent of the situation," says Kistler, an instructor pilot in the 357th Fighter Squadron. Even then, pilots still lack flail knowledge of the situation because the airman on the ground with whom they communicate is often taking cover. "That's when you show up and you have to put together the rest of the puzzle," he says.

In an effort to expedite such information to the pilots, the Air Force is providing digital upgrades to many of its ground-based communications technologies. The A-10C improvements will allow pilots to receive that information digitally from airmen, known as joint terminal attack controllers, embedded with ground forces.

Intelligence is now a driver of operations, says Col. Gary Crowder, commander of the 609th Air and Space Operations Center. As deputy director of the combined air and space operations center in Southwest Asia, he is responsible for the planning and integration of air and space operations across Central Command.

In previous conflicts, pilots would be briefed prior to flying. But now they also are taking in updated intelligence en route to their missions, and that information could change their tasking on the fly. "It's much more information-intensive," he says in a phone interview. "It is much more reliant on current, near real-time intelligence being fed to the ground commanders and the pilots to enable them to be able to do their jobs more effectively."

By nature, close-air support missions rely on intelligence from the battlefield, he says. That's why it's imperative for the pilot to have communications with the joint terminal attack controller on the ground. But the process has been a voice-intensive one. The JTAC reads a string of coordinates to the pilot via radio. The pilot writes it down on his kneeboard, punches it into the cockpit, and then reads it back to the JTAC for verification.

The situational awareness data link, or SADL, being installed in the A-10s, will speed up that process considerably by digitally connecting pilots to a network of combat communications systems. The JTAC on the ground can relay targeting information--a "nine-line"--to the pilot long before he arrives at the point of contact, says Crowder.

Having coordinates sent via text message means pilots no longer have to worry about poor line-of-sight communications with ground forces in combat.

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"It's more efficient, with less room for interpretation errors," says Harmon, the 354th squadron tactician. Last year, the unit flew more than 1,100 close-air support missions in Afghanistan during its six-month deployment with A-10A aircraft. The squadron is in the process of converting to the A-10C model.

Inside the A-10C, two multifunctional color displays can project moving maps overlaid with critical battlefield information, such as locations of friendly forces, enemy and anti-aircraft artillery. Operators also can choose to view imagery from their targeting pod and missiles, or display weapons stations or navigational information.

With a single switch change, pilots in the A-10C can go from dropping a bomb to shooting a rocket on a completely different weapons station without taking their hands off the throttle or stick. "It's much quicker and it's much more reliable," says Kistler.

In the A-model, the process is a tedious ballet of pressing multiple buttons in the cockpit to select and deselect weapons stations, which can be prone to errors.

For example, to aim the laser in the A-model, pilots have to hit the weapons release button. If the pilot previously had activated a wrong switch that called up a station holding a bomb or rocket, then a weapon might be released inadvertently, says Hannon.

Such ease in calling up weapons, targeting and deploying them in the A-10C means pilots will take less time to set up for multiple attacks in combat.

"What makes the A-10C even more lethal than the A-10A is the SADL integration and the targeting pod. That is really what helps shorten the kill chain," says Hannon.

Having the C-model capabilities in combat would have been beneficial in many cases, the pilots say. When deployed to Afghanistan in 2004, Kistler was escorting a Marine convoy at night when it took fire from a hillside. The JTAC pointed an infrared laser at the location where the troops wanted a laser-guided bomb dropped. Kistler maneuvered his targeting pod to the spot and marked it, and then his wingman dropped the bomb. The whole set-up process took 10 to 15 minutes. "We could have cut that in half with the C-model," he says. Instead of doing a buddy-lasing attack, he would have done a self-laser attack.

With the cockpit improvements come a number of associated problems. So much information flowing into the cockpit means that pilots will have to remember to keep their eyes up as much as they can. "The A10C technology does not change the fact that we will still strive for eyes on the target," says Hannon.

Because the tactical awareness display does not show incoming threats, pilots must keep watch for potential artillery, missiles and other surface-to-air weapons. A-10s typically fly in a two-ship formation. The flight lead coordinates with the airmen on the ground while the wingman flies the cover role, looking for those incoming threats.