According to a report at the Air Force Times, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a project that will enable ground forces to control the weapons systems on an A-10 — or even control the A-10 itself as an “unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV).”

The A-10 could be manned or unmanned; an unmanned plane would loiter autonomously but would be under the control of an A-10 pilot at a ground control station when responding to an attack and for all takeoffs and landings.

The pilot would give “coordinated consent” for the launch of weapons; the JTAC would fire the weapons using a portable computer. With the computer, the JTAC would access the A-10’s sensors, punch in coordinates for its targeting pods and determine the predicted blast radius and effectiveness of the weapons.

While the concept is intriguing, it masks the true improvement to air support that would result.  One of the greatest problems in an air support environment is the person on the ground doesn’t understand the “picture” the pilot sees.  In an extreme example, it is not unusual for a ground element in one country to ask the pilot if he sees “the blue roofed building,” not understanding that the pilot can see hundreds of buildings with blue roofs, and his targeting pod video is black and white.

The solution, of course, is to train the ground element on the same systems the pilot uses.  Current training courses attempt to do just that, but the huge variety in potential aircraft and system combinations makes specific, precise training difficult.  This challenging training is precisely what would have to happen if the ground contact was given control of those systems in the DARPA scenario.

In fact, the training would be more difficult, because the ground controller would have to be trained on the employment of the A-10, not just its weapons.  A more reasonable solution would be to feed the video from the aircraft to the ground, and allow the ground to upload pictures/video to the aircraft.  From there, the pilot could employ the aircraft in the way in which he has already been trained, and the ground element doesn’t have to worry about being trained to employ an aircraft.

In the end, it is unlikely there is a large scale plan to convert A-10s into QA-10 UAVs.  Instead, the technology demonstration will be integrated into future UCAVs; in one potential scenario, hosts of UCAVs could be loitering as “on call” air support and be activated when a ground controller called them in under his control.

Just over one hundred years ago man participated in the first heavier-than-air powered flight.  Even now, what was once considered science fiction continues to become reality.