The A-10’s Iranian Comeback: Is It Still Unsuitable for the IDF?
Hello, this is the Captain. No one likes to admit mistakes, but sometimes there is no choice, for example, the generals in the Pentagon who decided to retire the veteran A-10 attack aircraft, arguing that it was no longer relevant to the modern battlefield. Or, for that matter, me, who claimed that the IDF needs the A-10 about as much as a shark needs an umbrella. To earlier “The Captain” columns: The helicopters are already there, why not clear Iran’s mines from the air? Anatomy of a threat: Everything they didn’t tell you about Hezbollah’s new drones. A movie-style sting: How the IDF acquired the deadliest plane of the War of Independence. 2026 was supposed to be its final year, the generals ruled, and then came its swan song: the Iran war broke out, a complicated and dangerous theater, rich in air defense threats. But despite its limitations, the A-10 surprised everyone and the swan song turned into a comeback, with its life extended until at least 2030. How did it succeed where other systems failed, what does this teach us about air-to-ground warfare, and was I also wrong when I claimed that despite its power, it is not suitable for the IDF?
19 Gallery view A-10 in Israeli livery. And yes, this is the parrot-splitting squadron. Was I wrong about it? (Photo: USAF, image edited with AI)
The A-10 entered service in 1977 as a dedicated close air support aircraft for ground forces, targeting moving objects, tanks, armored personnel carriers, combat engineering vehicles and supply convoys. The idea was to stop a Soviet invasion of Europe, thousands of vehicles moving along German roads while protected by self-propelled anti-aircraft guns. To succeed, Fairchild Republic designed an aircraft optimized for fast, low-level flight, so it could circle enemy convoys and strike them. It was given heavy and varied armament, led by the GAU-8 Avenger, a tank-eating monster with seven 30 mm barrels, as well as bombs, rockets and missiles.
19 Gallery view A-10s on an improvised airstrip on the European front, practicing a Soviet attack (Photo: USAF)
How would it survive this arena? With armor for the engines and cockpit, numerous backup systems and an exceptionally tough structure, it is an extremely resilient machine. On paper, its main drawback was short range compared with standard fighter jets and limited capability against air threats. Presumably, if it fell into the sights of a Sukhoi, the A-10 would not get to meet the ground.
How did all this work in practice? At first, not so well. In the first Gulf War in 1991, A-10 crews had difficulty locating Saddam Hussein’s tanks, and more than once returned from a sortie without destroying a single one.
19 Gallery view An A-10 drops a laser-guided bomb (Photo: USAF)
Worse still, the aircraft’s sensor and system limitations caused identification errors, and in one case A-10 missiles hit British tanks. The lessons were learned, and the accuracy improved in the Kosovo War in 1996. In the early 2000s, the A-10 was upgraded and its hunting capabilities took a major leap forward. In the second Gulf War in 2003, enemy tanks and positions were destroyed exactly as intended.
The A-10 earned a reputation as a guardian angel. Infantry soldiers caught in ambushes knew they could rely on attack aircraft support, which often saved their lives in combat. The successes were repeated in Afghanistan and in operations against داعش in Iraq and Syria. U.S. troops applauded when they heard the Avenger cannon’s growl, here comes the savior.
19 Gallery view A-10s in a drill with an attack submarine (Photo: USN)
Now the generals found themselves in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand, air defense missiles had improved dramatically and the aircraft’s chances of surviving them kept shrinking, while the close support and moving-target mission had shifted to attack helicopters, hunter-killer drones and multirole fighter jets. And even without wars, the A-10 had aged and maintenance had become expensive and problematic. The natural thing would be to send it off with burekas, speeches by retired pilots and a trip to the aluminum plant.
On the other hand, the string of successes earned this aircraft a vocal lobby in the Pentagon, some of it made up of infantrymen saved by A-10 pilots, who argued firmly that it must remain in service because the alternatives are not good enough and cannot do the job.
19 Gallery view Speeches, flags, an honored crowd? Yes. Where’s the refreshments? (Photo: USAF)
You know what? They are right. The A-10 offers the best balance between getting to the event area in time, remaining there long enough to have an effect, and flying far enough with enough ordnance. Compare that with the alternatives. An attack helicopter has plenty of weapons, but it is much slower and has a shorter range. A hunter-killer drone has very long range and can loiter for a long time near the target, but it is slow and carries limited ammunition. And what about the fighter jet? Aircraft like the F-35 can get anywhere the fastest and carry a respectable weapons load, and their sensors provide superb accuracy. But they were not designed to be especially agile at low altitude, and they can make only a limited number of runs on the target before running out of fuel. In such a situation, the general can say that he sent air support to the battalion commander on the ground, while the battalion kept fighting alone for longer.
19 Gallery view The alternatives all involve compromises. Hunter-killer drone, attack helicopter and multirole aircraft (Photo: USAF, US Army)
This is how A-10 retirement plans were delayed and postponed again and again. Here and there, tests and trials were conducted to measure the effectiveness of the platforms meant to replace it, and over time it became clear that their performance was very mediocre. For example, in a U.S. Air Force trial with F-35s at the end of 2022, it became clear that the gap was very large, among other reasons because the pilots had practiced less for close air support and moving-target hunting missions.
19 Gallery view An A-10 breaking away and deploying flares (Photo: USAF)
In 2025, the generals finally decided it was time to move on, and 2026 was set as the A-10’s final year in operational service. Units began closing even earlier, that is where I got the photo of the ceremony above, but here we are talking about shutting down the entire force: spare parts, mechanics, equipment, the people will move to other units or retire, and the A-10 era will come to an end.
19 Gallery view An A-10 being placed in the U.S. Air Force Museum (Photo: USAF)
Then came February 2026. The sun rose, and residents of the Middle East woke to a new war, some to the sound of sirens and some to the thunder of explosions. The IDF and U.S. forces struck Iran with unprecedented force, and the Islamic Republic did not spare its neighbors or Israel. While we rushed to reserve duty and shelters, another arena opened up that Israelis do not think about much. Iraq became a hot front. The Shiite militias in the country, Kataib Hezbollah, Saraya Awliya al-Dam, and most of the organizations in the Hashd al-Shaabi terror federation, the “terrorist federation,” woke up with jihad in their eyes. All of them were fed from the Iranian teat, received equipment and training from Tehran, and showed the Americans what they had learned, suicide drones, rockets, cruise missiles, explosive drones and other munitions struck U.S. bases in Iraq itself, in Jordan and in Kuwait.
19 Gallery view A Saraya Awliya al-Dam Shahad 101 drone takes off (Photo: Shiite militia documentation in Iraq)
U.S. Air Force resources were focused in the eastern Persian Gulf, and so was intelligence attention. The militias were a difficult target, operating from isolated villages and remote desert areas, and often a mobile missile launcher disappeared before a drone or attack helicopter reached it. The militants targeted detection systems, air defenses, command and control, and airfields, and successful strikes affected the effectiveness of the American attack. That is where the 30 A-10s deployed to the Persian Gulf came in. The attack aircraft were sent to clean up Iraq. Terrorist convoys were hunted on desert roads with bursts of 30 mm fire, launchers were destroyed by precise missile fire from dozens of kilometers away, and terrorist camps went up in flames. Look at this image, these are terrorists filming the A-10 flattening their base while they try to take cover.
19 Gallery view Hiding and filming. Militants document an A-10 strike on their camp (Photo: Iraqi militia documentation)
The A-10 crews benefited from the lack of air defense threats in the sector, and although some aircraft were hit by cannon fire, the missions did not stop, and many militants found out firsthand whether there is life after death and what the weather is like there. At the end of March, most of the aircraft were transferred to operations in the eastern Persian Gulf for another mission against a different enemy, the Revolutionary Guards’ armed speedboats.
19 Gallery view Dives, strikes, circles back. A-10 documentation from across Iraq (Photo: Iraqi militia documentation)
Often, drones and other sensors were able to detect the boats, but they managed to slip away and disappear before Apache helicopters reached the relevant sector. A boat cannot hide in a grove, of course, but Iran operates these boats from tunnels adjacent to the water, which made them a target almost as elusive as missile launchers. The A-10 had a speed advantage over every attack helicopter and hunter-killer drone, and so it often succeeded where other platforms failed.
19 Gallery view An Iranian missile boat in thermal imaging. Photo: USAF
At the beginning of April, headlines echoed around the world: a U.S. two-seat F-15 was hit by Iranian fire, shot down, and the crew ejected behind enemy lines. The A-10 played a critical role in rescue operations. Search and rescue teams swept southern Iran to make it harder for the enemy to understand where the ejectees were hiding, and the attack aircraft was tasked with isolating sectors with fire. The two pilots were returned safely in a special operation, most of whose details remain classified.
19 Gallery view A Hercules search and rescue version, and the ejection seat of an American pilot (Photo: The Independent)
So wait, if the A-10 is so successful at what it does, why retire it at all? Why not upgrade it like other old aircraft? Reality has shown that it does the job. Age sounds like an excuse, after all there are aircraft in the American catalog that can outdo it, the U-2 spy plane, the B-52 heavy bomber and the KC-135 refueling aircraft that once landed at Ben Gurion Airport. All were designed and entered service in the 1950s. But the question is not how old an air platform is, it is how available and preferable the alternative is.
19 Gallery view Clockwise from top right, KC-135 tanker and B-52, U-2 aircraft, T-38 trainer and the legendary Hercules (Photo: USAF)
In the war with Iran, the A-10 was used by default, and under different circumstances the United States would have managed just fine without it. For example, if intelligence resources had been distributed in a way that provided a better picture of enemy activity in Iraq, it may have been less difficult to hunt down the local launchers and militants. In that case, the Americans could perhaps have eliminated them with artillery instead of sending in an aircraft. The Revolutionary Guards’ boat hunt might have been more effective if the U.S. military had used more long-range missiles, it has those, very good missiles, Spike missiles made by Rafael. And there were other systems that could have escorted the rescue operation too. The A-10 itself managed the mission only by the skin of its teeth, one of the aircraft was even hit and shot down.
19 Gallery view An Iranian sensor shows the launch, the hit and the shootdown of an A-10 (Photo: Iranian documentation)
Social media is full of militant footage showing A-10s diving on their bases and facilities. If the militant had been holding a shoulder-fired missile instead of his iPhone, the Americans would have needed five or even ten rescue operations to get them out. The Americans try not to operate the A-10 in areas that are too heavily threatened when possible. In the first Gulf War, six were shot down by anti-aircraft fire, in the second Gulf War one was shot down, and in all the other wars in which they took part, dozens of aircraft were damaged and still managed to land safely.
19 Gallery view An A-10 that made an emergency landing (Photo: USAF)
In Iran there was simply no choice, and thanks to the crews’ courage, the aggressive approach of the mission planners and a lot of blind luck, the missions were completed with minimal losses. The generals recognized its advantages and the fact that wars like this can flare up spontaneously both in the Persian Gulf and in other theaters, and they correctly decided to extend the A-10’s life. I do not see it reaching 2050 with massive upgrade programs like the B-52 or the Hercules, right? But the Iranian theater proved, first, that it is still relevant, and second, that the alternatives need major improvements.
19 Gallery view A U.S. unit team in a farewell photo with their A-10 at the unit closure ceremony (Photo: USAF)
Was I wrong in my assessment of the necessity and usefulness of the A-10 for the IDF? One can argue about that, and sometimes enjoy doing so, but I still believe not. You see, the mentality that brought the A-10 into the world and the mentality of the Israeli Air Force are so different that in practice they are opposite. The United States prepared for fighting in which it would necessarily lose aircraft. After all, all its systems and structure are optimized for repeated low-level passes over a small area rich in targets, and the aircraft is exposed to fire that will eventually hit it. The IDF simply does not work that way. We have too few aircraft, too little time and too little space. And an enemy that is not stopped will quickly reach Israel’s vulnerable rear. Here, support for ground forces comes from above, with precise fire based on our sensor superiority and short attack cycles. For example, a hunter-killer drone can both find the target and track it, and also attack it on its own, one of the reasons I call it a “hunter.”
19 Gallery view An A-10 illustration in Air Force colors (Photo: USAF, image edited with AI)
So in fact, here we do not need a tool that knows how to zigzag at low altitude and fire its cannon while enemy missiles roar around it, in most of the A-10’s advantages, the IDF would not use it at all. Its disadvantages, on the other hand, would stand out like a giraffe in a petting zoo. The Israeli Air Force operates in areas full of shoulder-fired missiles, and they occasionally hit our drones too. If we send an aircraft to the front that does its work at very low altitude, it is likely that it will not always return safely to base. And that is while its short range will not suit long-range strikes, its speed will affect the ordnance it releases, since dropping a bomb at Mach 1.5 allows it to fly farther, and all the while we will continue to pay dearly for its maintenance and repairs, as we said, the A-10 is no longer young.
19 Gallery view An Israeli drone hit by an enemy missile and falling in Lebanon (Photo: Hezbollah documentation)
For these reasons, if you ask me, the A-10 should not be on the IDF’s wishlist, even if Uncle Sam were offering to sell it to us. It is true that the security reality has changed and the Air Force is changing with it, and we are considering purchasing a new attack aircraft, the AT-802U Sky Warden. And although it too specializes in close air support, it is an economical platform that suits Israel’s needs and constraints. In the end, air-to-ground warfare has many facets. Not everything that suits the United States also suits us, and choosing the right means can make the difference between excellent combat performance and improvisations and workarounds that can work just as well as they can fail. Stay safe, stay alert, and we will win.
