U.S. A-10 Warthog Just BRRRRT Iran Militia… They Thought It Was ARMAGEDDON

U.S. A-10 Warthog Just BRRRRT Iran Militia… They Thought It Was ARMAGEDDON

They said that the A-10 was obsolete.

It wasn’t

stealthy.

It was too old.

It couldn’t be a tool in modern warfare.

An Iranian militia just

found out that all of this talk is nonsense, and it found out the hard way.

An A-10 flew

overhead, and the entire militia could see it coming.

Then they heard BRRRRT, and they

knew there was nothing they could do.

It’s an A-10 Armageddon as the U.S.

Air Force’s old

faithful just delivered pure destruction to Iran.

This time, the U.S.

A-10 Warthog didn’t hit a

target in Iran.

It struck Iraq.

On March 25, an A-10 flew to the Al Anbar Province in Iraq to

launch a devastating attack on the Habbaniyah base in that country.

That base is located about

50 miles from Baghdad, and it houses soldiers from the Iraqi military.

But hold on a second.

 

The U.S.

is at war with Iran, not Iraq.

Why is an A-10 crossing the border into Iraq? The answer

lies in three words – Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF.

This is the Iran-backed militia that

has joined members of the Iraqi military at the base that the U.S.

just struck, and America’s

A-10 has just wiped them off the map.

Footage has already emerged from the strike, and it

provides an interesting view of the A-10 in action.

We see the U.S.

warplane flying high

above the base it targeted.

For a few seconds, it almost seems like the A-10 is cruising.

 

Then, we hear the telltale BRRRRT.

That’s the A-10 rattling off dozens of rounds from its

30-millimeter GAU-8 Avenger cannon at the base, and that one volley of fire is all that it took.

 

Based on what we see in the footage, it looks like the A-10 is taking a high-angle attack

shot, based on how it’s seen in the sky.

This isn’t a low-angle strike.

The A-10 isn’t close to

the ground.

What this tells us is that the Iraqi militia base likely has Man-Portable Air Defense

Systems, or MANPADs, and the A-10 needed to stay high so that they wouldn’t be a threat.

The

high-angle approach worked.

The A-10 rattled off its shots, and the Iranian militia was ripped to

shreds.

Iran’s PMF forces tried to respond to the terrifying threat that was overhead.

More footage

shared on X shows that they wheeled out a Zu-23-2 autocannon in a desperate attempt to take the

A-10 down before it could do what it came to do.

This is one of the anti-aircraft systems, but it’s

hardly the best choice for dealing with the U.S.

attack aircraft.

The Zu-23-2 is a Soviet-era towed

anti-aircraft gun.

And when we say Soviet-era, we mean the very early era in terms of the Soviet

military buildup.

This is a gun that was designed in the late 1950s, and it’s only capable of

providing low-altitude air defense.

At one point in time, it was among the world’s most widely used

air defense systems.

But today, the twin-barreled 23-millimeter guns mounted to the Zu-23-2 aren’t

capable of dealing with modern airframes.

Of course, the A-10 isn’t exactly modern, as there

have been calls for its retirement that we’ll be getting into.

But all it had to do was take the

high-angle attack route we mentioned earlier, and that was all she wrote for the PMF forces at

the Habbaniyah base.

BRRRRT echoed in the skies, and those forces were ripped apart by the A-10.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry has already detailed the damage.

They’ve confirmed that the A-10

strike hit the Habbaniyah base’s engineering buildings and medical facility, taking out two key

components needed to keep the base running.

The PMF would have been crying out for those destroyed

medical facilities, as the A-10 also caused plenty of casualties.

The Defense Ministry claims that

seven Iraqi Army soldiers have been killed, along with another 13 being wounded.

It’s unclear

if those were members of the PMF or the official Iraqi military, but it almost doesn’t matter.

Iraq

brought this on itself by giving the go-ahead to the PMF to use the Habbaniyah base, and it has now

paid the price.

It might seem a little crazy that the U.S.

has extended Operation Epic Fury outside

Iran.

However, it starts to make sense when you realize that the U.S.

is now in a phase where it

has achieved almost total air superiority over Iran, and it is now doing everything that it can

to minimize the threat being presented to American troops.

Those soldiers are still operating in the

Persian Gulf region, where they’ve switched their focus to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and

allowing Iran-backed militia groups to be rogue in other countries creates a threat from outside

of Iran.

So, the U.S.

has to counter that threat.

And it’s here where things could get more serious

in Operation Epic Fury, as Iran’s militias have yet to really make their mark in the war.

One of

the key challenges of fighting against Iran is that you’re not only dealing with that country

and its military.

Iran has backed militias all over the Middle East and Gulf region to create a

proxy network of fighters that it can call upon to extend its influence and respond with asymmetric

attacks whenever Iran itself comes under threat.

Some of these you may already know about.

There

is Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has slowly been working to take control over that country, though

Israel’s war with Hamas in Palestine has caused issues with that work, as the Israel Defense Force

has also attacked Hezbollah at various points.

Hezbollah is very much involved in the current

fighting, as it launched missiles at central Israel at around the same time as news broke of

the A-10 strike against the PMF.

By the way, Hamas is another of the Iran-backed militias, as are

the Houthis in Yemen, who spent much of 2024 and some of 2025 making the Red Sea as dangerous for

merchant ships as Iran is now making the Strait of Hormuz.

The Houthis are on the verge of doing the

same thing again, as they have threatened to close the Red Sea in the wake of Operation Epic Fury.

 

Through these militia groups, Iran has spent years being the bully of the Middle East.

These groups

gave Iran plausible deniability.

Almost everybody knows that they’re being funded by Iran’s regime,

but the militias allowed Iran to launch attacks without getting its own hands dirty.

Plus,

they extend Iran’s reach to other nations, essentially allowing it to create something of

a proxy empire that it can unleash just as we’re starting to see now, about a month into Operation

Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion.

Yemen, Lebanon, and Palestine are all being impacted by

these militias, and, as we can see with the PMF, portions of Iraq are also under Iran’s sway.

It

isn’t quite accurate to call the PMF a single militia group.

The PMF is more dangerous than

that, as the London School of Economics and Political Science points out.

It says that the PMF

is actually an umbrella organization under which there are between 50 and 70 separate militia

groups that split their focus between at least three different entities.

Iran is one of them,

though the PMF has also attempted to make inroads into ingratiating itself into Iraq’s military and

to establish itself as a separate arm of the Iraqi state, much as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard

Corps, or IRGC, has done in Iran.

It seems likely that the IRGC is the organization that provides

the financial backing, along with some of the military muscle, that the PMF needs.

As for Iraq,

it seems to have a love/hate relationship with the PMF.

On one hand, groups that fall under the

PMF umbrella have clashed with Iraq’s government, as we saw when a couple of brigades from the

Shia Popular Mobilisation Forces stormed Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture in July 2025.

But on the

other hand, Iraq has passed laws allowing the PMF to operate in its territory and, according to

The Washington Institute, Iraqi state funding has been on the rise for the group.

The same

outlet says that the PMF was originally given state blessing to take Iraqi territory back

from the Islamic State, which has led to this mingling with the Iraqi government.

It seems that

Iraq’s government built a rod for its own back with these decisions to allow the PMF’s power to

grow.

But we mentioned earlier that Iraq brought the U.S.

A-10 attack in itself, and this isn’t

the reason why.

The situation with the PMF has escalated.

Before we tell you how, this is a quick

side note to remind you that you’re watching The Military Show.

If you’re getting valuable insight

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Now, Iraq made

a mistake at Habbaniyah.

That’s according to The Times of Israel, which reported on March 24 that

Iraq’s National Security Council had authorized the PMF to “exercise the right of self-defense and

respond to any attacks targeting their positions,” the outlet says.

What amounts to a green light

for Iranian-backed PMF operations on Iraq’s territory followed an earlier attack on the PMF

headquarters that killed at least 15 fighters and left a PMF commander dead.

A day later,

the footage emerged of America’s A-10 Warthog sending its bullets flying at the Habbaniyah Base.

 

And a day after that, we learned of seven more deaths and 13 casualties.

As strange as it may

sound, what we may be seeing from the U.S.

here is the rattling off of some warning shots.

Iraq’s

government giving permission to the PMF to defend itself is the latest example of this Iran-backed

grouping of militias ingratiating itself into Iraq’s national structure.

The U.S.

doesn’t want

to see that happen.

The more influence that the PMF gains in Iraq, the more likely that nation is

to fight alongside Iran on Operation Epic Fury.

So, the A-10 and its 30-millimeter cannons may

have been giving Iraq a taste of what’s to come if it gives the PMF too much power.

Alternatively,

and far more simply, the U.S.

wanted to strike a blow against one of the many Iranian militias

that are stationed throughout the Middle East, and it chose one that is in a country close enough

to Iran to present a threat to U.S.

forces.

After all, Iraq has a small coast on the Persian Gulf,

and its position to the west of Iran means that PMF forces in Iraq may be capable of striking U.S.

 

forces trying to operate in the Strait of Hormuz.

This is the issue behind the initial problem.

The

U.S.

is trying to stop the situation in the Strait of Hormuz from escalating.

Iran has been trying to

lock up that crucial waterway ever since Operation Epic Fury began, and it’s been doing a pretty

good job of it.

According to the United Nations, around 20,000 merchant vessels are now stranded

outside the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran has been using everything in its arsenal, from drones and

anti-ship missiles to fast boats loaded with guns and explosives, to make that strait too dangerous

to cross.

Iran has been allowing some ships through.

However, it is only granting passage

to those that it defines as “non-hostile” ships, which amounts to vessels that “neither participate

nor support acts of aggression against Iran.” Ships that have any ties to the U.S.

are being

blockaded and, in some cases, attacked.

The same goes for merchant vessels flying the flags of

any countries that have even a small positive relationship with the U.S.

Iran is basically

saying that any merchant ship from a nation that isn’t a direct and enthusiastic ally of Iran is

in danger.

This is a major problem for the U.S., especially if it views Operation Epic Fury

as a long-term campaign that is designed to remove Iran’s regime from power.

In peacetime,

the Strait of Hormuz plays a critical role in the global oil and gas industries.

The BBC

says that about 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through this single

waterway every year.

It being choked off has led to massive price shocks in those industries, which

is where we’re seeing Iran play the one major card that it has against the U.S.

Even as Iran’s

military infrastructure is shattered on land, it’s still able to deploy weapons, particularly

its fast boats, to seal up the Strait of Hormuz.

These fast boats are difficult to counter.

They’re

often little more than speedboats that have been loaded with weapons, meaning they’re fast enough

and powerful enough to reach and hurt merchant ships.

Once they’ve scored hits, they scurry

away back into hiding.

Nobody is using these fast boats to attack U.S.

warships, but that isn’t

the point.

Iran is able to conceal small ports all across the Strait of Hormuz coast, and it has

been using those ports to unleash its fast boats, leading to an asymmetric kind of blockade

that is successful because no merchant ship captain wants to take the risk of sailing when

these boats are around.

Nick Brown from Janes, which is a defense intelligence company, tells the

BBC that Iran could, in theory, keep this type of threat up indefinitely.

“Iranian forces are well

practiced in decoy, camouflage and subterfuge tactics, and many of their smaller weapons can

be disguised in commercial vehicles, hidden in buildings and out of sight along Iran’s long

coastline,” Brown notes.

Adding the PMF operating out of Iraq into that mix is the last thing

that the U.S.

wants to allow to happen.

Granted, Iraq’s Persian Gulf coast is only 58 kilometers,

or around 36 miles, long.

But it’s located to the north of the Persian Gulf, meaning the U.S.

has

to bypass the Strait of Hormuz to get there.

And this is without considering the possibility that

the PMF could start launching drones and anti-ship missiles from Iraq’s territory to hit ships

in the Strait of Hormuz.

So, the A-10 taking flight in Iraq wasn’t just about taking out a PMF

base.

It was also about letting Iran know that the U.S.

is willing to deal with its proxy forces,

especially if they have a chance to present a threat in the Strait of Hormuz.

Sticking with that

Strait for a moment, would you like to guess which U.S.

aircraft has been deployed to that strait to

counter what Human Rights Watch calls Iran’s war crime of attacking merchant ships with fast

boats and drones? If you answered the A-10, then give yourself a pat on the back.

What is

clearly among the most versatile airframes in the U.S.

arsenal is also being deployed to the Strait

of Hormuz, where it has been strafing Iran’s fast boats with the very same 30-millimeter cannons

that it used to tear through the PMF base in Iraq.

General Dan Caine, who is the Chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed this on March 19, when he said, “The A-10 Warthog is now in

the fight across the southern flank and is hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft in the

Straits of Hormuz.” These A-10s are being joined by Apache helicopters, which allow the U.S.

to

deploy low-altitude firepower in the Strait of Hormuz.

The A-10 is perfect for this kind of job.

 

It was originally built to conduct the close-range destruction of ground and surface targets, such

as mechanized units, in support of ground forces.

Attacking fast boats in the Strait of Hormuz is a

little different from that task, but the key here is that the A-10 can fly low enough to get within

cannon range of those boats, and it can then shred them quickly and far more cost-effectively than

a fighter jet that has to stay high and can only rattle off expensive missiles at those boats.

 

By now, it’s clear that the A-10 has become one of the most important airframes that the U.S.

has

as it moves into the next phase of Operation Epic Fury.

But here’s something crazy.

Many in the

U.S.

military structure have been calling for the retirement of the A-10 for years! As Defense

One points out, some in the U.S.

have argued that the A-10 should be retired to allow the U.S.

Air

Force to pivot more toward airframes that allow it to compete with China and Russia.

The same outlet

even notes that the F-35, which itself proved very effective during the early days of Operation

Epic Fury due to its stealth capabilities, was once pitched as a direct replacement for

the A-10.

But as American A-10s are taking out Iranian militia bases and proving themselves very

effective in the Strait of Hormuz, these calls surely have to have died down.

The reality is that

the A-10, despite the fact that it was introduced way back in 1976, is still an extremely effective

aircraft when deployed in a region where the U.S.

has established air superiority.

That’s precisely

what America has achieved in Iran, and, based on the ancient anti-air weapons the PMF tried to use

against the A-10 that struck its base in Iraq, the U.S.

doesn’t have much to worry about on

the air defense front when attacking isolated Iraqi militia bases.

The A-10 is an airframe

with a lethal cannon that is also capable of carrying up to 7,200 kilograms, or 16,000

pounds, of mixed ordnance that includes bombs, both dumb and guided, missiles, rockets, flares,

and chaff.

The National Interest adds that the A-10’s long service history, along with its many

exploits in conflict since the 1970s, makes the case for it being the most successful airframe in

the U.S.

arsenal.

Sure, it’s old.

It’s not as fast as many of America’s fighter jets, and it doesn’t

have the stealth capabilities of an F-35 or a B-2 bomber.

But when faced with an enemy that either

has a destroyed air defense network, such as Iran, or an unsophisticated one, such as the PMF, the

A-10 is still a very capable aircraft.

America’s A-10s aren’t quite ready to fly off into the

sunset just yet.

They’re far too busy taking out bases, destroying fast boats, and proving

to Iran and its militias that there is still plenty of life left in an airframe that some have

labeled obsolete.

By the way, we mentioned earlier that Apache helicopters have joined the A-10s in

the Strait of Hormuz, and that they add to the low-altitude firepower that the U.S.

is bringing

to bear against Iran’s fast boats.

Those attack helicopters are hitting Iran hard with Hellfire

missiles and powerful chain guns, and they bring a lot more to the Strait than these weapons

alone.

Find out more in our video, and remember to subscribe to The Military Show so you don’t

miss any of our coverage of Operation Epic Fury.