A-10 Warthogs Arrive in the Strait of Hormuz — A Major Turning Point
They said it couldn’t happen. Military analysts said it would never happen. Iran spent decades and billions of dollars making absolutely sure it would never happen. And yet, right now, at this very moment, it is happening. A slow, loud, 40-year-old American attack aircraft is circling Iranian airspace. Not hiding, not darting in at Mach 2 and racing back to safety.
Circling, hunting, firing at will with no one left to stop it. If that sentence doesn’t stop you cold, let me say it again differently. The United States has deployed one of its most vulnerable, most easily detectable, most unsophisticated combat aircraft directly into the airspace of a nation that spent the last 30 years building an air defense network specifically designed to shoot it down.
And that aircraft is not being shot down. It is doing the shooting. Welcome to States News. I’m going to tell you exactly what is happening over Iran right now, what it actually means, and why the full picture is far more alarming, more consequential, and more historically significant than anything you’ve seen in your headline feed today.
Stay with me because by the end of this, you are going to understand this war at a level that almost no one in your life does. And I promise you, the story gets wilder the deeper we go. Let’s start with the aircraft because understanding the aircraft is the key that unlocks everything else. The A-10 Thunderbolt 2, officially the Thunderbolt 2, unofficially, universally, the Warthog.
It was designed in the 1970s. It entered service in 1977. It is not fast. It is not stealthy. It does not fly high. Its service ceiling is just 20,000 ft. To put that in perspective, the Russian S300 air defense system, a system that Iran is known to possess, can engage targets at altitudes of up to 100,000 ft.
That is five times higher than the A-10 can even reach. Under any normal set of circumstances, flying a warthog into a country with functioning S300 batteries is not a military strategy. It is a funeral. And yet, the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Pete Hgsith, stood in front of cameras and said this. Apache helicopter gunships are flying strike missions inside Iranian airspace and throughout the Strait of Hormuz at will.
He also confirmed that A-10 Thunderbolt 2 aircraft were operating freely in Iranian airspace. And then he said the sentence that every military analyst on Earth stopped cold to process. You only send these slow, low-flying, closeair support platforms when the enemy has no meaningful air defenses left. No meaningful air defenses left.
In Iran, the country that spent 30 years and billions of dollars building exactly that. Let that land for a moment before we go any further. Now, here is where most coverage gets it wrong because they skip the context. They cover today’s headline without explaining how today became possible. And without that context, nothing makes sense.
So, let’s go back. Because what you’re watching right now did not begin on February 28th, 2026, when Operation Epic Fury officially launched. It began more than 8 months before that, June 2025. The United States and Israel launch Operation Midnight Hammer. A targeted air campaign aimed at the core of Iran’s nuclear program.
The strikes are devastating. Enrichment facilities at Fordo and Natans take catastrophic damage. The metallurgy complex at Isvahan is destroyed. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are set back by years, possibly decades. But here is what the headlines missed at the time. Operation Midnight Hammer didn’t just hit the nuclear program.
It punched massive holes in Iran’s air defense network. holes that Iran, for reasons of money, logistics, sanctions, and political miscalculation, never fully repaired. By December 2025, Forbes was already publishing analysis warning that Iran faced critical and growing gaps in its air defense capability. And then came the most extraordinary moment.
Former Iranian President Hassan Rahani, not an American analyst, not an Israeli spokesperson, but a former president of Iran itself, made a public statement that should have stopped the world. He said, “The skies over Iran have become completely safe for the enemy. We no longer have real deterrence. Our neighboring countries, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, all have airspace controlled by the United States and Israel.” Read that again.
The former president of Iran said his own country’s skies were safe for the enemy. He said they had no real deterrence left. He said this publicly before Operation Epic Fury even began. And by the time the operation launched, military analysis from Army Technology reported that Iran had approximately 100 air defense launchers left across the entire country.
100 for a nation the geographic size of Iran. And there was no guarantee those hundred were even compatible with the full range of missiles Iran would need to mount a serious defense. Iran walked into this war already critically wounded. Then came the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury. IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzy Helvy confirmed that within the first 24 hours of the campaign, 80% of Iran’s air defense systems had been destroyed or disabled.
80% in one day. That is a number that would have sounded like science fiction 12 months ago. But it wasn’t fiction. It was the result of years of intelligence gathering, precision targeting, and the systematic exploitation of every gap Iran had failed to close after Operation Midnight Hammer.
But here is what that 80% figure doesn’t tell you on its own. 80% destruction of a network that was already critically degraded doesn’t leave you with a smaller but still coherent defense. It leaves you with wreckage, scattered isolated nodes with no integration, individual soldiers with shoulder-mounted launchers, a handful of radar stations operating in total isolation from each other, older systems that were never designed to function without the network they were built around. That is not an air defense.
That is an inconvenience. And that is the environment the A-10 Warthog now flies in over Iran. But the physical destruction of launchers and radar dishes is only half the story. And this is the part that almost nobody is talking about. The United States didn’t just bomb Iran’s air defense network into rubble. It also blinded it.
Simultaneously, EA18G Growler aircraft equipped with some of the most advanced electronic warfare systems on Earth were flying alongside the stealth platforms from the very first hours of the campaign. Their job was to jam radar, disrupt sensors, create corridors of temporary blindness across the entire network.
Space-based systems added another layer. The result was that even the air defense units that hadn’t been physically destroyed were functionally useless, unable to see, unable to target, unable to respond. And it was during those windows of enforced blindness that the A-10s entered Iranian airspace in the early phases of the campaign, striking air defense units that had been compromised by cyber and electronic warfare before those units could recover and fight back.
Think about what that means architecturally. The stealth bombers didn’t do this alone. The electronic warfare aircraft didn’t do this alone. The satellites didn’t do this alone. This was a synchronized multi-dommain assault on every layer of Iran’s defensive capability, physical, electronic, and digital.
executed simultaneously in a way that no air defense network in history had ever been designed to withstand. And it worked. Now, let’s talk about what the Wartthog is actually doing out there. Because the mission profile in the Straight of Hormuz is as important as the mission profile over Iranian territory. Iran’s strategy in the Strait of Hormuz since this conflict began has revolved around its fleet of fast attack watercraft.
Small, highly maneuverable boats operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy. They can be launched quickly. They can swarm larger vessels. They carry missiles, torpedoes, and explosives. And they have been used to close down one of the most strategically critical waterways on the planet. Roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passes through the Straight of Hormuz.
When Iran effectively closed it, oil prices surged past $100 per barrel, threatening supply chains from Europe to Asia, squeezing economies that were already under pressure and sending global markets into a controlled panic. The A-10 is extraordinarily welldesigned to answer exactly this threat. Its GAU8 Avenger, a seven-barreled rotary cannon mounted in the nose of the aircraft, fires at nearly 4,000 rounds per minute.
Depleted uranium rounds that can punch through tank armor. A fast attack boat doesn’t stand a chance. But the cannon is only the beginning. A10s operating in the straight have been carrying Mark 82 generalpurpose bombs. AGM65 Maverick air-to-s surface missiles with a range of over 17 miles, meaning the aircraft can destroy a vessel long before it can be threatened in return.
Laserg guided munitions for precision strikes in confined waterways, AIM9 Sidewinder missiles for self-defense against drones and older aircraft, and the APKWS2 rocket for additional anti- drone capability. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, confirmed this publicly, stating at a Pentagon press conference that the A-10 Warthog is now in the fight across the southern flank and is hunting and killing fast attack watercraft in the Straight of Hormuz.
He also confirmed that AH64 Apache helicopters had joined the fight on the southern flank, targeting Iranian drone threats. America’s Gulf State allies have deployed their own Apache fleets in support. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE collectively operate dozens of AH64 helicopters, adding additional firepower to the campaign to clear the waterway, and the results have been staggering.
As of late March, Secretary Hegsith stated that the United States had struck at least 10,000 individual targets in Iran since the operation began. Not 10,000 munitions, 10,000 targets. The United States claims that 92% of Iran’s large naval vessels have been eliminated from the conflict. Iranian missile launches are down 90%. The result of a systematic campaign against launch sites, production facilities, and supply chains, and 29 of Iran’s ballistic missile launch sites have been destroyed, according to satellite imagery published by the
Washington Post on March 29th. But the most strategically consequential strikes have not been against missiles already built. They have been against the infrastructure that builds new ones. The sites at Shahoud, Parchin, Kojier, and Hemtt, all critical nodes in Iran’s ballistic missile supply chain, producing the fuel that powers Iran’s entire missile program, have sustained damage that exceeds even what they absorbed during the 12-day war in June 2025.
Sentcom Commander Admiral Brad Cooper said it plainly in a March press briefing. We will systemically dismantle Iran’s missile production capability for the future. This is the logic of the campaign at its deepest level. You can shoot down a missile, but if you destroy the factory that makes the fuel, you don’t set the program back for months.
You set it back for years. And the A10 has been central to these strikes. Flying in the electronic warfare corridors created by the Growlers, hitting targets that stealth aircraft softened up, and hunting the naval threats that threatened to turn the straight of Hormuz into a permanent choke point.
Now, here’s where I need to stop and give you something that almost no one in mainstream coverage is acknowledging clearly enough because it is the most important single data point in this entire story. Two former commanders of United States Central Command have gone on record with the same assessment. Not active duty officials who have to be careful about what they say publicly.
Former commanders speaking freely. And what they said was this. Former SenCom commander and CIA director David Petraeus said, and I want you to hear this carefully, we’re not really concerned at this point about the air and ballistic defense of Iran as long as you stay above heavy machine gun range. And that means you can just really pour it on.
I would argue that we actually have air supremacy now, not just air superiority. Former SentCom commander and Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie said this. I think we’re accomplishing the objectives we set out. Sentcom is executing a long-prepared campaign plan. We’ve been able to take out Iranian air defenses to the degree that I would argue we have effectively air supremacy over most of Iran.
And what that has given us the opportunity to do is go hunt for ballistic missiles. Air supremacy, not air superiority. Air supremacy. Those are not the same thing. And the difference matters enormously. Air superiority means you can operate while the enemy still poses some threat to your aircraft. Air supremacy means the enemy essentially cannot challenge you in the sky at all.
Two former Sentcom commanders, both using the strongest possible language, both pointing to the same conclusion. And before you dismiss that as the boasting of retired officials, remember what we established at the beginning of this. The proof isn’t in what former generals say. The proof is in what aircraft are flying where.
When the United States sends in its F-35s, its B2 Spirit stealth bombers, its F-22 Raptors, that tells you the enemy still has teeth. When it sends in A10 Warthogs and Apache helicopters, that tells you the enemy’s teeth are gone. The aircraft are the evidence. The aircraft are already there. But here is where I have to be completely straight with you because this story has a harder edge that you need to hear. 80% is not 100%.
And on April 3rd, 2026, just two days ago, the United States suffered its first aircraft losses to enemy fire in more than 20 years. A US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran. One of its two crew members was recovered. The search for the second crew member is still ongoing as of right now.
Around the same time, a US Air Force A10 Thunderbolt 2 went down near the Strait of Hormuz. The pilot was successfully rescued. Iranian state media claimed its forces struck the A-10 with anti-aircraft fire. Fox News, citing a senior source, reported that the cause was actually enemy fire encountered during the rescue operation for the F-15E crew rather than an Iranian air defense system.
The cause remains disputed. The Pentagon has not clarified, but here is what is not disputed. For the first time since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, American aircraft are being shot down. This does not reverse the strategic picture. Iran still lacks any coherent integrated air defense network. The United States still maintains overwhelming air dominance, but it is a reminder that scattered, degraded, isolated air defense capability is not zero.
Shoulder-mounted launchers, heavy machine guns, residual missile batteries operating in isolation. These are not an air defense network, but they are still dangerous and they will continue to inflict a cost. According to the latest figures, Operation Epic Fury has now resulted in 13 American service members killed in action and 365 wounded.
The human cost of this war is real. It is not abstract and it is rising. And here is where the story shifts again. Because while those numbers are registering, the strategic pressure is building toward a decision point that could change everything about how this conflict ends. President Trump extended Iran’s deadline to fully reopen the Straight of Hormuz to April 6th.
Then on Saturday, April 4th, Trump posted on Truth Social that he had given Iran 48 hours before, in his words, all hell will rain down on them. A senior Iranian military official rejected the ultimatum publicly, calling it, according to CBS News, a helpless, nervous, unbalanced, and stupid action. The straight remains largely closed.
Oil prices remain above $100 per barrel. A small trickle of merchant vessels is moving through, but normal commercial shipping has stopped. The economic pressure on global trading systems is immense. Five European Union nations, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria, are now pushing for a windfall tax on energy companies profiting from the crisis.
And now we get to the part of this story that is not being reported broadly enough because it represents a potential escalation of a completely different magnitude. According to Esoff News, as of April 3rd, the United States has been formally briefed on a complex ground operation plan. The objective of this plan is to secure or remove Iran’s remaining stockpile of highlyenriched uranium.
approximately 970 lbs of uranium enriched to 60% purity stored in tunnels more than 300 ft underground near Isfahan. The plan would require flying in heavy excavation equipment. It would require constructing a temporary runway capable of handling cargo aircraft large enough to remove that material. It would take weeks, possibly months, and it would put American boots on the ground inside Iran with all the risk that entails, not just for those service members, but for the entire trajectory of this conflict and for every geopolitical relationship America
currently holds. President Trump has asked for this plan. He has been briefed on this plan. Whether he gives the order to execute it is the question now at the center of every serious strategic conversation about where this war goes next. And the pieces for a ground operation are already visibly assembling.
The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has arrived in the Sententcom area of responsibility. The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit is on route. A second aircraft carrier departed the US East Coast and is heading to the Middle East. Two new EA 37B Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft which arrived in the United Kingdom just days ago are now moving to the Sententcom Theater.
These aircraft are specifically designed to deny, degrade, and disrupt enemy communications, radar networks, and navigation systems. They are not reconnaissance platforms. They are offensive electronic warfare tools and they are heading toward Iran. You do not move Marine expeditionary units, carrier strike groups, and specialized electronic warfare aircraft toward a theater because you are planning to deescalate.
The architecture of what is assembling in that region right now tells a story that the press conferences haven’t fully caught up to yet. Meanwhile, the battle for the Strait of Hormuz is grinding forward. General Kaine has confirmed that A-10s and Apaches are operating on the straight southern flanks, targeting fast attack boats and intercepting Iranian one-way attack drones.
Gulf state allies are deploying their own Apache fleets in support. But clearing the straight will not be a matter of days. It will take weeks. There are anti-ship missile batteries remaining along Iran’s southern coast. There are fast attack boat fleets still in operation. There are naval mines to locate and neutralize.
And there are dozens of smaller military installations that need to be cleared before commercial shipping can safely resume at normal volumes. As recently as last Friday, Iranian media reported that US and Israeli strikes set ablaze 16 commercial barges in the port of Bandar Abbas. Iranian forces are still launching drones, still firing missiles.
Even at a fraction of their original capacity, the resistance has not collapsed. But let’s zoom out now because this is where perspective becomes essential. In under 6 weeks, the United States and Israel have accomplished the following. They destroyed or disabled 80% of Iran’s air defenses within the first 24 hours of the campaign.
They killed Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ali Kam in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury. They struck 10,000 individual targets. They eliminated 92% of Iran’s large naval vessels from the conflict. They drove Iranian missile launches down by 90%. They destroyed 29 ballistic missile launch sites. They destroyed the most critical missile fuel production facilities in the country.
And they put A-10 warthogs, slow, loud 40-year-old aircraft, into Iranian airspace where they are flying freely enough to hunt boats and strike supply chains. Two former Sentcom commanders call it air supremacy. The aircraft themselves are the evidence. Now, there is one final dimension to this story that I want to give you because it connects everything we’ve discussed to a debate that has been running inside the American military for years.
and Operation Epic Fury may have just settled it permanently. The A-10 Warthog is scheduled for retirement. Air Force budget documents for 2026 call for the entire remaining Warthog fleet to be phased out of service by 2027. The argument that has been made for years by the Air Force leadership is simple. The A-10 is too slow and too vulnerable for modern warfare.
It cannot survive in a contested environment. Its role is too narrow. Phase it out and replace its functions with faster, more survivable platforms. That argument is now being dismantled in real time over Iranian airspace. Retired US Air Force Colonel Kim Campbell, who famously landed a badly damaged A-10 with no hydraulic power after being hit over Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, predicted this moment before this war began.
In an interview with Flight Global, she said, “If there are ground forces on the ground and we move beyond the initial stages of the conflict, there is going to be a role for a ground support platform in some way.” She said this before Operation Epic Fury. And she was right. The aircraft that was supposed to be too obsolete for modern warfare is now hunting Iranian naval assets in one of the most strategically critical waterways on Earth.
While generals with decades of sentcom experience use the word supremacy to describe what it represents. Whether the A-10 survives its own retirement timeline is now a genuine open question because what is being demonstrated over the straight of Hormuz is not just the capability of an old airframe. It is the capability of a doctrine.
A doctrine that says air supremacy, when it is real and when it is total, transforms the battlefield in ways that no amount of theoretical wargaming can fully capture until you watch it happen. Here is where things stand. As of today, April 5th, 2026, the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. President Trump’s 48 hour ultimatum to Iran expires tomorrow.
An F-15E crew member is still missing inside Iran. The A-10 pilot who went down near the straight on April 3rd has been recovered. Ground invasion planning is actively underway and has been briefed to the president. Marine expeditionary units are arriving in theater. A second carrier strike group is on route.
Specialized electronic warfare aircraft are moving into position. And A-10 Warthogs and Apache helicopters are flying over Iran right now. What happens next depends on a decision that may already have been made in a room that none of us have access to. There are two paths from here. If Iran opens the straight, if the regime concludes that the cost of continued bombardment is greater than the cost of capitulation, the A-10s and Apaches will have done their job.
The campaign shifts into a consolidation phase, managing the destruction that has already occurred and dealing with whatever political transition follows inside Iran. That path leads to an enormous amount of uncertainty, but it is at least a path that doesn’t require American ground forces in Iran. If Iran refuses, if the regime decides that backing down is existentially intolerable, then the question is no longer whether American boots will be on the ground in Iran.
The question is when. And that scenario carries implications that extend far beyond the Persian Gulf. Global oil markets. NATO relationships, supply chains on every continent, and the strategic calculations of China, Russia, and every other major power that has been watching this conflict from the sidelines and drawing its own conclusions about American capability and American will.
This is not a story about aircraft. It was never a story about aircraft. It is a story about the limits of deterrence, about what happens when decades of defensive investment fail in real time against a prepared and determined adversary. It is a story about the speed of modern air campaigns and what they can accomplish in days and weeks that would once have taken months or years.
It is a story about the cost of military degradation and the compounding price of leaving vulnerabilities unpatched after you absorb a blow. And it is a story about what America’s military can do when it decides fully to move. The skies over Iran belong to the United States right now. Two former Sentcom commanders said so.
The warthogs flying over Iranian territory prove it. And what comes next, whether this ends at the Strait or continues on the ground, will shape the Middle East, global energy markets, and the international order for decades. States News will be here for every development, every shift in the strategic picture, and every moment that matters.
If this breakdown gave you a deeper understanding of what is actually happening in Iran right now, share it with someone who is still only getting the headlines. Subscribe so you never miss our next analysis. And drop your thoughts in the comments. Where do you think this goes from here? The ground operation, the straight reopens, or something no one is predicting yet? We’ll be watching and we’ll see you in the next