Front tire wear on inside creating pockets and road noise. how much of the front end do i need to replace to achieve alignment?

You can't stop short with front end repair or your just throughing money away . But upper and lower ball joints are the biggest problem on this vehicle . The uppers are not bolted they used rivits to hold them to the frame and with antilock brakes the vehicle shakes from side to side and this loosens the rivets once there loose the front end can not be alinged So start with that ball joints the rest of the parts are heavy dudty

Definitely start with the ball joints.

You can check them by placing a jack under the control arm and jacking the wheel aff the ground about on inch or so. With a pry bar inserted under the wheel pull up on the pry bar (it helps to have a helper do this while you watch the lower ball joint where it connects to the knuckle). If the ball joint moves it is bad.

With the wheel still jacked up push in and pull out on the top of the tire. The upper will move in and out if it is bad when you do this.

These are very common front end parts to fail on these vehicles and will cause the symptoms you have described. One the repairs are made an alignment should be done.

I’m happy to assist further over the phone at https://www.6ya.com/expert/jeremy_d728a59f986299fa

Wearing on the inside is probably from negative camber. The cupping is caused from several things: wheel bent or out of balance, worn tie rod ends, worn idler arm, worn shock absorbers. The only way to tell what needs to be replaced os to have the front end inspected by an alignment specialist. My guess is you are looking at replacing all the above items, plus the ball joints and control arm bushings. You can buy the control arms with the bushings and ball joints already installed. It's a lot cheaper than having the old bushings and ball joints replaced. If you buy new tie rod ends, get the good stuff. I just replaced mine with the low priced Chinese junk, and the threads on the new castellated nuts stripped out before they reached the proper torque. And the threaded part of the tie rod end where the nut goes would start spinning and wouldn't tighten up all the way. So, get the name brand items and save yourself a lot of headaches.