The Pentagon is confirming it carried out several lethal strikes in Syria in recent days, including the use of Fairchild Republic A-10C ground-attack jets from the US Air Force (USAF).
Videos circulating on social media purport to show the highly-recognisable “Warthog” attack fighters operating over Syria, amidst a renewed offensive in the war-torn country.
Footage posted to platforms including X and Threads on 3 December shows the distinctive outline of the twin-tail A-10 flying low over a desert city, claimed to be Deir ez-Zor in the Syria’s eastern region – well away from the area of rebel advance.
In one video, an A-10 skims just hundreds of feet above a dense, low-rise cityscape. The lone jet pulls into a hard banking turn before discharging countermeasure flares and pulling off.
It is unclear exactly where, or when, the footage was taken. However, the Pentagon is now confirming the use of A-10Cs over Syria on 29 November.
“US Central Command also successfully engaged a hostile target employing A-10 fighter aircraft that had posed a threat to US and coalition forces,” said Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder on 3 December.
Washington maintains a small presence of ground troops in Syria, whose protracted civil war has seen the country Balkanized into multiple territories controlled by a melange of rebel groups opposing Damascus, including factions backed by the USA and Turkey, while Russia and Iran support the Assad government.
The USA also deployed a squadron of A-10Cs to the Middle East in October, with the US Central Command subsequently publishing photos of the heavily-armed aircraft operating from an undisclosed location.
The USAF is the only global operator of the iconic ground-attack jet, famous for its cross-wing silhouette, titanium bathtub cockpit and tank-killing GAU-8 Avenger 30mm cannon. That distinctive direct fire weapon can be heard in one unverified video posted to X.
Notably, the Pentagon is denying taking any action in conjunction with the recent rebel offensive against Syria’s leader, which launched unexpectedly at the end of November and has seen the city of Aleppo fall into rebel control.
“The self-defence actions… were in no way related to ongoing operations in and around Aleppo or northwest Syria,” Ryder says. “We remain fully prepared to defend and protect our personnel and assets deployed in the region to include our forces deployed to Syria.”
The two-star general also confirms a separate set of strikes occurred on 3 December, after rocket artillery and mortars landed near an American base in Syria called Military Support Site Euphrates. The Pentagon did not disclose how those strikes were carried out, but confirms three rocket artillery systems and a Soviet-era T-64 tank were destroyed after posing a “clear and imminent threat to US and coalition forces”.
Washington has repeatedly struck targets in Syria over the past year, including an intercontinental bombing mission by Boeing B-1B Lancers in February.
The latest offensive against Damascus-held territory was undertaken by Islamic militants with the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – a faction designated as a terrorist organisation by the USA that was previously allied with al-Qaeda.
Those forces have successfully advanced, despite air strikes from the Russian air force and opposition from Syrian government forces. The BBC reports Russian air strikes in the cities of Aleppo and Idlib have killed and injured dozens of civilians since the offensive began.
A motorised column of Iranian-backed militants from neighbouring Iraq was also reportedly hit by air strikes in eastern Syria while en route to reinforce Damascus, although this has not been independently confirmed.
Despite the confirmed presence of US close air support jets in the area around rebel forces, the Pentagon continues to deny any active role in the situation beyond defence of American forces and their allies. Ryder reiterates that HTS remains a designated terrorist organisation in Washington.
The Pentagon maintains that its forces in the country have the narrow mission of preventing a resurgence of the terrorist group Islamic State, which seized wide swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014.
Kurdish militias and Iraqi government forces, backed by US aircraft and ground troops, pushed the group out of Iraq in 2017. The US mission in Syria began to hunt down remaining pockets of IS still operating in that country.
Story updated on 3 December to include confirmation from the US Department of Defense
