In the world of bombing, you have strategic bombing and you have interdiction, which is what we do when we need to soften up a country. We take all the concentrated targets: infrastructure-oriented targets like power grids, roadways and bridges. Hitting locations like that deny the enemy the ability to move around and react to our attack. In this specific style of bombing that we’re talking about in Afghanistan is close air support. It’s more dangerous.

Dive bombing in close air support was first used in the Banana Wars in the 1920s when Marines were deployed to stabilize Central American countries like the Dominican Republic and Haiti from rebels targeting the banana and sugar plantations. Air support was later on in places like Burma and Indochina in the 1930s, in places where it was almost impossible to bring artillery into the jungle and rugged terrain, and there was no way to supply effective backup for normal troop movement. The role once filled by artillery has come over the years to be filled by close air support.

A-10s are a great slow-flying, long-loitering close air support. As a slow flying plane, the A-10 is more likely to be able to put its munitions on target, and being a low-flying aircraft, the angle of attack a ground defense person has to take to take that plane down with a shoulder-fired missile is difficult to achieve. Accuracy and survivability increases with slow and low planes. They can loiter there and they can circle around and hang in the area to offer immediate close air support. When you’re dealing with small-arms resistance and scattered insurgents, it helps to use gun ships in conjunction with slow-moving aircraft so you can draw a bead on the guy running around below. With A-10 Warthogs in the area, the helicopter gun ships would have been AH-64 Apaches. The two operate under the same control structure; they operate in a joint mode.

On the ground, the way you call an air strike is quite similar to the way you would call in artillery support. In the old days it was based on grid squares and you’d call in the grid coordinate. Ever play Battleship? It’s the same thing when you call in air strikes from a grid coordinate. Here’s where it’s pretty important to learn military-speak or you could make a devastating mistake out there. You might hear people in the movies say ‘niner’ instead of nine. That’s because a nine sounds like a five on the radio. If you’re standing on five-five asking for something to be dropped on nine-five, you better be sure what you’re saying is crystal clear.

Now we have GPS, which makes things a little safer and changes the parameters of what we call ‘danger-close,’ when you’re within 400-800 meters of the target. Military GPS detects your position to within a meter, so there’s no guesswork as to where you’re standing. You tell them the enemy is three clicks to the left and it’s all set. With National Guard troops embedded in the Afghan Army, it’s a good assumption that these guys are equipped with GPS. It’s great for calling in strikes, but GPS serves another purpose, too. It keeps our guys from getting lost in Afghanistan. They’re out there running around in unfamiliar territory with indigenous troops with whom they’ve got a language barrier with anyway, and we’re not willing to take any chances on something happening to them. You’d like to think you can trust everybody, but it’s war.