How The New 2026 US Super A-10 Warthog Goes To War

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]The A-10 Warthog was designed to survive the kind of fights that chew other aircraft apart. It's scarred frame, it's violent scream, and that bone-shaking cannon have pulled countless soldiers back from the edge. And now, with a 2026 [music] rebuild, this beast hits harder, hunts smarter, and refuses to back off from modern threats. [music] So, what upgrades made this beast even deadlier? How the Warthog became the infantry's favorite monster. Imagine soldiers taking fire, pinned in a street or a field, and they need a friendly aircraft that can show up fast, stay close, and hit the exact truck, bunker, or tank that is hurting them without flattening everything around it. That job needs a plane that flies low enough and slow enough for the pilot to see what is really happening and tell friend from enemy with human eyes, not just by staring at radar screens. For a long time, the United States tried to do that job with aircraft that were built for other roles.

[00:00:55]>> [music] >> In the Vietnam War, a tough old propeller plane called the Douglas A-1 Skyraider carried huge loads of bombs and rockets and could circle over a fight for hours, which made ground troops love it. But, as North Vietnam filled the sky with heavier anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles, that big, slow aircraft became easier to hit, even though it had armor around the cockpit. Fast new jets like the F-4 Phantom were not the answer either. They were built for speed and high altitude. When they raced over the jungle at very high speed, it was hard for pilots to pick out a single truck under trees or a small team with a rocket launcher near friendly troops, >> [music] >> and the risk of hitting the wrong target went up. While Vietnam taught those lessons, planners in Europe stared at maps of West Germany with dread. If the Cold War turned hot, Soviet tank columns could pour through terrain gaps like the Fulda and drive toward Western Europe.

[00:01:47]Stopping that steel flood needed more than high-altitude bombing. It needed an airplane that could tear up tank columns, protect friendly infantry, and operate all day from forward air strips.

[00:01:58]Out of that mix of bad experiences and scary forecasts came a very clear idea.

[00:02:03]The Air Force did not just need another fast fighter that could also drop bombs.

[00:02:07]It needed a flying tank built from the ground up to protect people on the ground. That idea turned into a formal effort in the late 1960s called the AX program, short for attack experimental.

[00:02:19]The goal was to build a simple, tough, cheap to run jet that could take off from short, rough, even damaged runways, carry a heavy load of weapons, live through serious ground fire, and kill tanks for a living. Inside the Air Force and the Pentagon, a small group pushed hard for this kind of machine. They wanted an aircraft that mechanics could fix with basic tools at forward bases.

[00:02:41]One that pilots could fly low and slow without needing a room full of computers to keep it stable. And one that put money into armor and firepower instead of polished cockpit trim. It was not a glamorous vision, but it matched what troops in the mud actually needed.

[00:02:55]Several companies answered the call with designs. In the early 1970s, the competition came down to two prototypes.

[00:03:02]The Northrop YA-9 and the Fairchild Republic YA-10. Both were blunt-nosed, straight-winged attack jets built for low-level work, but the Fairchild design leaned even harder into the ugly practical look that later earned it the nickname Warthog. On the YA-10, the two jet engines sat high on the back of the fuselage with the twin tail surfaces partly hiding them. That odd layout helped keep the engines away from sand and rocks kicked up from rough fields, and also hid some of their hot exhaust from heat-seeking missiles.

[00:03:34]>> [music] >> After a series of fly-offs and tests in the early 1970s, the Fairchild jet won and went forward into production as the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

[00:03:43]The wildest part of the design was not even the airframe. It was the gun. At the same time as the AX program, the United States was funding a huge rotary cannon called the GAU-8 Avenger. It's a seven-barrel gun that fires 30-mm shells built to punch through the armor of modern tanks. [music] The complete gun system, including the spinning barrel cluster and the ammunition drum, is about 19 ft long and weighs well over 4,000 lb, roughly the same size as a small car. In fact, the gun and its drum make up close to 1/6 of the empty weight of the whole airplane.

[00:04:18]Because the weapon is so large and so central to the job, the design team basically built the airplane around it.

[00:04:24]The gun is mounted slightly to one side inside the nose, but the single barrel that actually fires when the pilot pulls the trigger sits exactly on the center line. That way, when the gun is firing, the recoil pushes straight back through the spine of the jet instead of twisting it off target. That's why, if you look at an A-10 from the front, the nose wheel is oddly off to the right. It had to move out of the way of the gun.

[00:04:47]When the pilot fires, the GAU-8 can reach a rate of about 3,900 rounds per minute, though in combat, the bursts are usually limited to a second or two. In that short burst, the gun fires dozens of shells, and tests show that about eight out of 10 of them will land inside a 40-ft circle when the target is roughly 4,000 ft away. The ammunition belt usually mixes armor-piercing rounds and high-explosive rounds.

[00:05:12]Armor-piercing shells use a very hard core to punch through several inches of steel plate at normal attack distances, and the explosive ones rip open thinner targets and set off fuel or ammo. Put together, the effect on a tank or armored vehicle caught in the open is brutal. But the A-10 was never only about what it could kill. It also had to survive flying into places where people on the ground were pointing guns and missiles straight at it. To give the pilot a real chance, Fairchild wrapped the cockpit in a heavy shell of titanium armor. This bathtub uses plates about 1 and 1/2 in thick and weighs around 1,200 lb in total. It's built to stop hits from high explosive shells up to about 23 mm in size, the kind of heavy anti-aircraft fire that would tear most other jets apart. The rest of the body follows the same idea. Many key systems are doubled and [music] routed along different paths so that one lucky hit doesn't knock everything out at once.

[00:06:08]The two jet engines are spaced apart, mounted high on the back of the aircraft, and separated from the tail and the wings. That spacing means a missile or shell blast that wrecks one engine is less likely to destroy the other at the same time. The flight control system uses fluid-powered lines, but there are extra lines in different locations, and there is even a full mechanical backup mode. In that backup mode, the pilot can still move the main control surfaces with cables and pulleys if all the hydraulic fluid has leaked out. In both tests and real combat, A-10s have managed to keep flying and return to base with big sections of the tail, wing, or engine area blown away.

[00:06:46]Fuel is another weak spot on most aircraft, so the designers treated it with the same care. The main fuel tanks sit close to the center of the jet, away from the wingtips, and they're aligned with foam blocks that cut down the risk of fire or explosion if a shell punches through. The tanks can seal themselves to a degree after a puncture, and valves can shut off damaged sections to keep the remaining fuel from draining out.

[00:07:08]The way the A-10 flies also fits this close support job. Instead of thin swept wings like a sleek fighter, it has big straight wings with a large surface area and strong flaps that gives it a lot of lift at low speeds and lets it carry heavy weapon loads without needing a long perfect runway. Its landing gear is tall and rugged with wide low-pressure tires that can roll over bumps and loose stones on rough airstrips or [music] even stretches of highway. Because the airframe is so stable, the pilot can fly slower and lower than most jets while still keeping good control. The Warthog can cruise over a battle area at speeds that give the person in the cockpit time to scan the ground with naked eyes, pick out hidden vehicles [music] and gun positions, and line up cannon or bomb runs with care instead of guesswork.

[00:07:52]Even with the landing gear pulled up, part of the main wheel still sticks out below the body. That odd look is on purpose.

[00:07:58]>> [music] >> If the pilot ever has to make a belly landing because the gear will not come down, those partly exposed wheels can take some of the first impact and help keep the main structure from tearing apart. All of these choices were [music] in place before the A-10 ever fired a shot in combat. But, the real test came in the early 1990s. The first big war for the Warthog was Operation Desert Storm in 1991, when a group of countries led by the United States moved to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. [music] In that short, intense air campaign, A-10 crews flew thousands of attack missions against Iraqi ground forces.

[00:08:32]>> [music] >> The aircraft destroyed more than 900 Iraqi tanks, about 2,000 other military vehicles, and around 1,200 artillery pieces over the course of the war. They also shot down at least two Iraqi helicopters with cannon fire, which is a rare trick for a jet that was never meant to be a pure air-to-air fighter.

[00:08:49]The Warthog did not come through that war without scars. Several aircraft were hit by missiles or heavy guns, and a small number were shot down. But, many others came back with damage that would have killed most jets, including holes in the wings, shredded tail sections, and missing panels. By the time the new century began, the A-10 had earned a hard reputation as a guardian for people on the ground and a nightmare for tank crews and convoy commanders. [music] Its basic shape, its thick armor, and that huge cannon were all doing exactly what the original designers had hoped. But, the world around it was changing. Inside the A-10, a super upgrade. By the early 2000s, the Warthog had proven itself in combat, but it faced a [music] new problem. Its armored body could take punishment, but inside the cockpit, pilots still flew with round dials, paper maps strapped to their legs, and targeting systems that depended on their own eyes, against evolving threats, that was not enough. The Precision Engagement Program would transform the A-10A into the A-10C by dragging [music] it into the digital age. Two color screens replaced many gauges and tied into a digital moving map and a new weapons computer. The layout added hands-on throttle and stick, or HOTAS, putting extra switches and thumb controls on the stick and throttle so the pilot could change weapons, move sensors, and mark locations without letting go of the main controls. For a jet that spends its life down low, that mix of screens and HOTAS was a huge step away from the paper map era. Those screens do more than look pretty. They pull flight data, fuel, and weapon status into one place and lay it over a live map. Friendly forces, target areas, and danger zones show up as clear symbols instead of scribbles. The weapons computer knows what hangs on each wing and tracks how much is left.

[00:10:30]All of that cuts workload and lets the pilot spend more time looking outside for threats and targets instead of hunting across a forest of dials. New brains need new eyes. So, the next step was to bolt targeting pods, such as Sniper and Lightning, under the wings.

[00:10:45]Each pod is a long sensor package with a day camera, an infrared view that turns heat into a clear picture at night or through smoke, and a laser to mark targets. Before these pods, an A-10 pilot often had to dive in and visually search for trucks and gun teams with the naked eye, hoping to spot them through dust and trees. With pod video on the cockpit screens, the pilot can now scan for medium height, lock onto a small moving vehicle, and watch it in real time. The pod measures exact coordinates for that [music] point on the ground and feeds them straight into the weapons computer.

[00:11:17]The way the A-10 talks to the rest of the force changed [music] just as much.

[00:11:21]A key part of the makeover was the Situational Awareness Data Link, usually shortened to SADL. Air Force releases compare it to an internet-style network for jets and ground units. Each member sends small bursts of digital data and in return sees a shared map on their screens. Friendly units appear as blue symbols. Known or suspected enemy positions show up in other colors. The map updates again and again while the fight is still going on instead of being frozen at takeoff. Defense coverage also notes that Link 16, [music] another data link used by many fighters and command aircraft, is being added so the Hog can plug into an even larger web of shared tracks and targets. Modern secure radios and on some jets satellite communication back this up so the pilot can talk [music] clearly with ground controllers and command posts without constant static and confusion. All of that information has to reach [music] the pilot in a way that does not overwhelm them. That is where the helmet-mounted cueing system comes in.

[00:12:16]On the A-10C, many units use a system known as Scorpion. The helmet has a small clear display in front of one eye.

[00:12:23]Symbols that used to live only on the main screens now float in the pilot's field of view lined up with what they're seeing outside. If the pilot turns their [music] head toward a suspicious truck or flash from the ground, they can press a small switch and tell the targeting pod, "Look over there." The pod turns [music] to that point, locks on, and the coordinates appear on the displays. If the jet's warning system senses a missile launch or radar [music] lock, a bright cue on the helmet shows the direction so the pilot can react with a turn or a [music] burst of flares without hunting for the right gauge.

[00:12:54]Giving the Hog a new brain and new eyes would not mean much without sharper claws. One of the biggest changes in the 2010