There were approximately 20 Thai pilots assigned to Firefly at a time. They flew seven hours a day on slow-moving T-28s with RLAF marking. Originally designed for military training in the late 1940s, T-28s could fly very low and had a cruising speed of only 200 miles per hour. These attributes were deemed suitable for Laotian topography with mountainous terrain and dense jungles, where fast-moving jet fighters could easily miss their targets. Firefly pilots had two main tasks. The first task was to conduct air interdiction where they bombed strategic assets of the enemy, e.g. bridges, roads, and ammunition storage. In cases where their targets were large and needed more powerful bombs, Firefly pilots would operate as Forward Air Controllers (FACs), firing rockets out at the enemy. Then, American jet aircraft from Thailand would come
and bomb those targets.