back to the beginning of my talk-on.
Nowhere did it say to go one unit from the southern castle. I decided I would try going one unit south from the castle in the water. That put me just on shore, a little south of the southern castle. There I noticed a small road that ran out from the other side of the castle that I had not seen before. This road formed a V with the larger dirtball, and going one unit south put me right smack dab in the middle of that V. There was also a small road that ran from the larger dirtball into a large grove of trees that was covering the entire inside portion of the V. I put my binoculars up to the point where that small road disappeared in the trees and saw… nothing. However, there was a small concrete pad with what looked like a small hardened shelter close by. I swung my aircraft back around, refocused my binos, and got a closer look. There it was—sticking out of the tops of the trees—the upper half of a Giraffe radar. Not believing it, I checked at least two more times. It was definitely the Giraffe. Smokey did not have the target in sight—there was no way he could have. I directed him to continue to cover us, and I quickly set up for a gun pass on the Giraffe.
“Magic, Swine 91. Confirm we are cleared to engage this target,” I queried, almost wishing I hadn’t asked and fully expecting him to deny me.
“Swine 91, you are cleared to expend 30 mm on that target,” Magic quickly replied.
I found myself about 10 seconds later hanging in the straps on about a 70-degree diving delivery. In my excitement I had failed to do the most important thing—fly the jet! I was able to shoot only about 50 bullets, not anything close to what I wanted to put down. They did impact the immediate target area, however. I asked Smokey if he had seen my bullets hit so that I could clear him in on a pass of his own. He came back with a negative, so I climbed back to altitude. This time I made sure that I was in a good position to roll in, and with two bursts—about 300 rounds—from the mighty GAU-8 the Giraffe slumped over, smoldering and resting on the same trees that had just provided it cover. The 81st had stuck its finger in Milosevic’s eye, and the monkey was finally off our back. It was nothing new for the A-10. As it has done in every war in which it has been involved, the Hog proved it had the ability to adapt to nearly any mission at a moment’s notice and have success, leaving some other high-tech jets stuck in orbit.
Chapter 7
TACTICAL INNOVATION
Introduction
The A-10 was a ridiculously simple fighter aircraft in its 1999 configuration, as well as the one used in OAF. When measured by twenty-first-century standards, its avionics suite lacked the gadgets that are standard in most modern fighters. There is a long list of what it did not have: GPS for precision navigation; a targeting pod for target identification or laser designation; a data link for receiving or passing target coordinates; a high-speed data bus for a moving map display; precision survival-radio-finding equipment for CSAR; and radar to provide precise target elevations for medium-altitude attacks or to find a tanker at night or in the weather. Its engines, not having been updated, continued to limit the Hog’s maximum airspeed to less than 225 knots at 20,000 feet. Even with this long list of have-nots, the A-10 retained some distinct advantages.
The Hog had abundant cockpit space for stacks of maps, mission materials, and gyrostabilized binoculars. It also had a big canopy on which to write, with grease pencil, the target area and striker information. We had a great mix of weapons, particularly the 30 mm gun and the Maverick missile, both optimized for our targets. We had great logisticians and maintainers to keep the jets in top shape and fully loaded. We had pilots who trained daily in a European environment and learned to capitalize on the A-10’s strengths, compensate for its shortcomings, and skillfully evaluate the ground situation. Notwithstanding these strengths, we still had to refine and develop a few new tactics and techniques during the course of our OAF operations.
Efficient cockpit organization was critical to expeditious target identification and attack. Each pilot had his own techniques and habits that worked best for him. These evolved as we compared and adopted each other’s tricks. For example, we needed a faster method to determine and pass target information critical to incoming fighters. After an A-10 AFAC located a lucrative target, he had to develop the data necessary for the FAC-to-fighter brief. To do so, while flying the aircraft, he would have to use a sequence similar to the following:
1. Find the general target area on a large-scale map (1:250) that had markings for each of the smaller-scale maps (1:50).
2. Determine which 1:50 to use.
3. Find the correct 1:50 among the stack of 16 such maps.
4. Study the terrain, roads, forests, power lines, and houses marked on the map to match the target area on the ground.
5. Read the coordinates, in Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) format, from the scale on the map.
6. Write these coordinates on the inside of the A-10’s canopy in grease pencil.
7. Go back to the 1:50, follow the contour lines to determine the target elevation in meters, and write that on the canopy.
8. Use the Inertial Navigation System to convert the UTM coordinates to latitude and longitude, and write those on the canopy.
9. Use the HUD to convert the elevation from meters to feet, and write that on the canopy.
10. Finally, read the target information to the incoming fighters over the radio.
By contrast, F-16CG and F-14 FACs with targeting pods could simply point their laser designators at a target to determine its relative range, direction, and elevation. The aircraft’s avionics automatically integrate that information with its GPS information and instantly display target coordinates and elevation in the desired format. If the incoming fighters are equipped with a compatible data link, they could pass the information without even using the radio.
We could often get around the need to “pull” coordinates off the map by directing strikers to rendezvous at a known point and then talking the striker’s eyes onto the target, usually with the aid of a mark. Generally, the striker would still need the target elevation.
Several of our Allied Force innovations were genuine “Air Force firsts.” For instance, Lt Col Coke Koechle described the first cooperative employment of an A-10 with a USAF Predator drone. When we understood what had happened and what was possible, we asked for more interactive targeting. Sometimes it seemed rather comical when CAOC personnel, without FAC expertise, tried to use the Predator’s camera feed to describe a tank hiding in the woods. The Predator camera has a very narrow field of view (FOV), similar to looking through a soda straw. The discrepancy between that narrow FOV and the wide FOV an AFAC has when looking out of an A-10 canopy flying at 20,000 feet often resulted in lengthy and frustrating talk-ons. The CAOC transmission would sound something like “the tank is in the woods near a dirt road,” reflecting the only tank, woods, and dirt road the Predator feed displayed. However, the AFAC saw dozens of woods and dirt roads from 20,000 feet and was still no closer to finding the tank. The problem was amplified further when the target descriptions were passed through the ABCCC to the AFAC.
The CAOC recognized the problem, and talk-ons improved when it tasked a pilot with FAC experience to man
