The A-10 Proves Its Worth Again Over the Strait of Hormuz

In this handout photo in an undisclosed location, a U.S. Airman prepares an A-10 Thunderbolt II for flight from a base in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Dec. 19, in support of Operation Hawkeye Strike. Handout photo by U.S. Air Force via Getty Images

Commentary

Despite Air Force claims that the A-10 has no place on the modern battlefield, a claim it has been making for decades, the A-10 is once again using its unmatched versatility and loitering capability to destroy fast-attack watercraft, drones, and enemy positions. And for the role it is performing in Operation Epic Fury, the Warthog is vastly superior to any F-35, F-15, F-16, or B-2, or even the most advanced drone in the U.S. arsenal.

While somewhat sleek, high-flying stealth fighters such as the maintenance-heavy F-35 dominate the Air Force budget, it is the A-10 Thunderbolt II that the Air Force is being forced to rely on to take the fight to the enemy’s backyard in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. Central Command has confirmed that A-10s are destroying Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fast-attack boats, shooting Shahed-style drones out of the sky, and striking ground targets.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine highlighted the Warthog’s southern-flank contributions in a March 19 briefing, noting its ability to provide persistent overwatch where speed and altitude are actually negatives when it comes to the kind of clearing operations for which the A-10’s versatility and toughness make it ideal.

The A-10’s versatility starts with its enormous loadout capacity. A single Warthog can haul up to 16,000 pounds of mixed ordnance across 11 hardpoints. Current missions have it carrying AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles for precision strikes on boats or armored vehicles, APKWS II laser-guided rockets that deliver low-cost kills against cheap drones and agile fast boats, and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles for additional air-to-air or anti-drone capability. The A-10 can also deliver general-purpose bombs with great precision, and it can dispense mines. All of this is in addition to the aircraft’s legendary 30mm GAU-8 Avenger seven-barrel Gatling gun, firing 3,900 rounds per minute. With 1,174 rounds, the GAU-8 can shred all but the heaviest armor, small vessels, structures, and personnel with devastating kinetic energy.

No other fixed-wing platform or helicopter combines this sheer volume of firepower with the flexibility to switch seamlessly among missiles, rockets, guns, and bombs on the same sortie. And its drone-killing rockets cost just $25,000 to $35,000 each, compared with the hundreds of thousands to more than a million for the missiles an F-35 would have to use to kill a $20,000 drone.

That versatility is amplified by the A-10’s unmatched ability to hit a target, duck behind a ridge or other terrain feature, and then come back to hit another target. Fast, high-flying fighters launched from hundreds of miles away from the target burn through fuel rapidly and typically must return to base after a single pass. Advanced, very expensive drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper offer endurance but lack the Warthog’s raw destructive power and survivability. The A-10, by contrast, can loiter for hours at low altitude, engage multiple IRGC fast boats or a flight of drones, pull back beyond visual range or behind terrain to avoid return fire, and then reenter the engagement minutes later with its gun, rockets, bombs, or even air-to-air missiles. This capability is invaluable in the ongoing, extremely important efforts to break Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Of course, the Warthog is far from invulnerable. Yet its unmatched toughness, coupled with its unparalleled ability to use low-level flying and terrain masking and an extensive suite of defensive countermeasures, allows it to operate in environments that would be more perilous for any other aircraft. Twelve hundred pounds of titanium armor form a “bathtub” around the cockpit and critical systems. Double- and even triple-redundant systems enable the plane to get its pilot home after sustaining damage that would be fatal for any other aircraft. Chaff, flares, and electronic warfare jamming pods help it avoid having to demonstrate its toughness. And its legendary low-and-slow flight profile lets pilots hug the earth or duck behind ridges to break line of sight with enemy radars and gunners. Where other aircraft need to remain at high altitude or engage from large standoff distances, the Warthog operates where the fight actually is. And with Iran’s air defenses much degraded, the Warthog’s chances of returning from a mission become all that much better.

Showing up those proclaiming its irrelevance on the “modern battlefield” is nothing new. The A-10 has been delivering stellar performance since it got its first real test in the 1991 Gulf War, where it flew more than 8,000 sorties and destroyed hundreds of Iraqi tanks and thousands of other vehicles. And it did so while absorbing ground fire that would have downed any other aircraft, helicopter, or drone. In Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, joint terminal attack controllers and ground troops repeatedly rated the Warthog as the best close-air-support (CAS) platform available.

Compare that record with that of the F-35 Lightning II. The Air Force’s prized stealth fighter is a flying computer, but its unreliability, extreme fragility, and terrible low-speed handling characteristics make it incapable of executing the persistent, low-level, high-volume attack missions the Warthog is flying today. When loaded externally with the amount of ordnance the A-10 carries routinely, the F-35 lights up enemy air defense radars and becomes a clumsy aircraft with very little range. It carries a paltry 180 rounds of ammunition for its far less powerful 25mm gun, compared with the A-10’s 1,150 armor-piercing 30mm rounds. The F-35 lacks the rugged construction, the redundant systems, the loitering capability, and the ability to turn terrain and the horizon into features capable of foiling or degrading the effectiveness of air defense systems. Making it even more vulnerable, in a desperate effort to save the F-35 program, the F-35 was stripped of protective safety equipment, such as its ballistic liner and the onboard fire suppression system, to keep it light enough to fly. This makes it one of the most fragile fighters in the sky.

Other Warthog advantages include being able to fly at least twice as many sorties per day and costing less than half as much per flying hour as the F-35. The F-35 is the very antithesis of a close-air-support aircraft, and no amount of budget-busting “Block upgrades” will ever change that.

Retired A-10 pilot Lt. Col. Thomas Norris, who has more than 3,000 hours in the cockpit, stated, “Unless you have lived and breathed CAS 24/7, you don’t know CAS and are likely to underestimate how hard it is and how important it is.”

A veteran Air Force joint terminal attack controller echoed this in past operations: “I have worked with F-16s, B-1B bombers, F-15s, F-111s, F/A-18s, etc., and no other [close-air-support] plane comes even close to the A-10.”

These words continue to ring true as the Warthog loiters over the Persian Gulf, delivering what fast jets and drones cannot.

Yet despite the A-10’s ongoing demonstration of battlefield prowess, the Air Force remains bound and determined to get rid of it. In June 2025, the service accelerated plans to retire all 162 remaining A-10s by the end of fiscal year 2026 (Sept. 30, 2026), but Congress intervened again in the latest NDAA, prohibiting reductions below 103 aircraft through the end of fiscal year 2026. As it stands, the Air Force is still pushing to achieve full divestment of A-10s before 2029. For more than two decades, senior Air Force leaders have undervalued the A-10, even as it continues to show up uber-expensive “tarmac-class” fighters—fighters that spend far more time on the ground being maintained than actually flying.

But the troops on the ground and the joint terminal attack controllers who have called in A-10 strikes under fire know better. And the combat record in 2026 is making the case once again. Sure, drones can provide some types of close air support, but the robust, heavily armed, unjammable A-10, with a moral agent going into harm’s way at the real point of the spear, brings something to the battlefield a drone with its operator safely ensconced far away from the line of contact cannot—and that is precisely why the A-10’s retirement should be canceled for the foreseeable future.

So, as the battle for the Strait of Hormuz ramps up, the “obsolete” A-10 is once again providing bang-for-buck lethality unmatched by any other U.S. aircraft, proving that on the modern battlefield, durability, reliability, and an ability to operate at the line of contact are hard to beat.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.