Without this system, or another set of equipment that offers an equivalent capability, Joint Strike Fighter pilots could find it much more difficult to quickly separate enemy forces from friendly troops and innocent civilians when it matters most. We don’t have to speculate about how bad things can get, either.

In October 2015, a U.S. Air Force AC-130U made a horrific mistake and blew apart a hospital that the non-governmental organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, was operating in Kunduz, Afghanistan. In its investigation, the U.S. military found that the gunship’s ROVER system, along with other data links, were malfunctioning, forcing the aircraft to try and locate its target using only verbal descriptions over the radio from JTACs blocks away from the actual fighting.

According to POGO, none of this is particularly surprising. The sources that shared the information, who asked to remain anonymous out of a very real fear of retaliation from senior Air Force leadership, said the service had crafted the test plan without talking to a single member of the A-10 or JTAC communities or the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, which provides Warthogs and Joint Strike Fighters, among other types, for test purposes. Army and Marine Corps personnel were also conspicuously absent from the discussions. Tactical Air Support Inc., also known simply as TacAir, a private contractor that provides air-to-air and air-to-ground training support to the Air Force, led the development of the evaluation program.

It’s worth noting that the Air Force has gone on the record to voice its opposition to this evaluation in the first place on more than one occasion. “I think that would be a silly exercise,” then-U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh notably said of the proposed fly off in 2015.