The A-10 Warthog is not going anywhere yet. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 20, 2025, that the Cold War-era attack jet will remain in the Air Force inventory through at least 2030, giving pilots, maintainers, and the communities built around A-10 bases a concrete planning horizon for the first time in years.
“We will continue to fly the A-10 through the end of the decade,” Meink said during a hearing on the Air Force’s fiscal year 2026 budget posture, according to the official committee transcript. The statement came in response to pointed questions from senators who have watched the service try, and fail, to retire the Thunderbolt II for more than a decade.
Why the A-10 keeps surviving
The Warthog was built in the 1970s for one job: destroying Soviet tanks on a European battlefield. Fairchild Republic designed it around the GAU-8 Avenger, a 30mm rotary cannon so large the aircraft was essentially constructed to carry it. The jet’s titanium “bathtub” cockpit armor, redundant flight systems, and ability to loiter low and slow over a battlefield made it a favorite of ground troops long after the Cold War ended.
That reputation was cemented in combat. A-10s flew thousands of sorties during the 1991 Gulf War, destroying roughly 900 Iraqi tanks and more than 2,000 military vehicles, according to Air Force historical records. The aircraft saw heavy use again in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it played a significant role in the air campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq starting in 2014. For soldiers and Marines who have called in close air support under fire, the Warthog’s low-altitude gun runs are not abstract policy. They are personal.
That combat credibility is a major reason Congress has blocked or slowed every Air Force attempt to retire the fleet since the mid-2010s. The service has argued repeatedly that money spent sustaining roughly 280 aging A-10s would be better invested in newer platforms designed for potential conflict with China or Russia. Lawmakers, particularly those representing the handful of bases that fly the jet, have pushed back just as hard.
The congressional fight behind the timeline
Meink’s 2030 commitment did not happen in a vacuum. It arrived during a budget hearing where the Air Force was simultaneously asking Congress to approve retirements of other legacy aircraft while defending its modernization spending. Senators used the session to press for specifics on which platforms would stay and which would go.
On the legislative side, S. 1071, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, contains provisions restricting A-10 divestment and imposing reporting requirements the Air Force must satisfy before retiring any Warthogs. As of May 2025, the bill appears to be in the early stages of the legislative process and has not been enacted into law; its record is cataloged through the Government Publishing Office’s GovInfo system. The exact conditions in those provisions, including any fleet-size floors, dollar thresholds, or reporting deadlines, have not been fully excerpted in publicly available documents, so the precise strength of the proposed congressional guardrails remains unclear.
Separately, Rep. Tom Barrett of Michigan has led a bipartisan effort to protect A-10s stationed at Selfridge Air National Guard Base near Detroit from early retirement. Barrett’s office published a press release citing local job impacts and the need to preserve close air support capacity, and the campaign included letters to congressional leadership and legislative language tied to NDAA negotiations.
Selfridge is not the only base with skin in the game. A-10 units are also stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, and Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, among other locations. Each of those installations supports hundreds of maintenance, operations, and support jobs tied directly to the Warthog mission. Members of Congress from those states have their own reasons to resist a fast retirement timeline, even if their efforts have drawn less public attention than Barrett’s.
What the Air Force has not said
Meink’s testimony confirms the A-10 will fly to 2030, but several important questions remain unanswered. The Air Force has not publicly detailed how much it plans to spend on A-10 sustainment across the Future Years Defense Program, the five-year budget blueprint that accompanies each annual request. Without those numbers, it is difficult to judge whether the 2030 commitment is backed by real funding or is a planning assumption vulnerable to future budget pressure.
The service has also not named a specific replacement for the close air support mission the A-10 performs. The F-35A Lightning II is the most commonly cited candidate, and it has already taken over some missions at bases where A-10s have been retired. But the F-35 is a multirole stealth fighter, not a dedicated ground-attack aircraft, and critics argue it cannot replicate the Warthog’s ability to loiter over a battlefield at low altitude for extended periods. The Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which aims to field autonomous drone wingmen, could eventually absorb some CAS tasks, but those systems are still in development and years from operational deployment.
No Air National Guard leaders at Selfridge or other affected bases have spoken publicly about transition planning in the documents reviewed for this article. The only on-the-record advocacy comes from congressional offices, leaving the operational perspective from guard units themselves absent from the public debate. Wing commanders and state adjutants general would be the people best positioned to explain how prepared individual bases are for a shift away from the A-10 mission and what alternative aircraft or roles they might receive.
What this means for A-10 communities
For service members, guard units, and towns near A-10 bases, the practical takeaway is straightforward: the aircraft and its associated missions, maintenance jobs, and training infrastructure have a confirmed runway through the end of the decade. That is not a permanent reprieve, but it is more certainty than these communities have had in years.
The documents to watch going forward are the FY2026 NDAA’s final enactment status and the reports Congress has required the Air Force to submit before any retirements proceed. Those filings will determine how rigid the 2030 line really is and what replacement missions might follow once the Warthog finally leaves front-line service. Anyone making career or business decisions tied to A-10 operations should track those milestones closely, because the political and budgetary forces that have kept this aircraft alive for decades are the same ones that will eventually decide when it goes.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
