Military Sentinel, Nellis AFB – The U.S. Air Force has completed the 66th Weapons Squadron’s final A-10C Thunderbolt II sortie at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, officially terminating dedicated advanced tactical instruction for the A-10 attack aircraft as the Pentagon accelerates its divestment from specialized close air support (CAS) platforms.
The milestone follows the recent shutdown of the formal A-10 pilot training pipeline at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. While existing instructor cadres will maintain basic unit-level qualifications, eliminating the U.S. Air Force Weapons School curriculum dismantles the institutional pipeline tasked with developing high-end tactics for the venerable platform ahead of its planned fleet-wide retirement by 2030.
Dismantling the Training Infrastructure
The cessation of syllabus operations at Nellis marks a point of no return for the A-10 enterprise. The Air Force has sought to retire the twin-engine, straight-wing jet for over a decade, repeatedly meeting resistance from lawmakers who argued that no direct replacement matches its low-altitude loiter endurance and austere-field performance.
Service leaders maintain that holding onto legacy, single-role airframes drains resources essential for modernizing tactical aviation. The Air Force estimates that fully divesting the remaining A-10 inventory will liberate roughly $423 million annually in operations and maintenance accounts, capital targeted for redirection into fifth- and sixth-generation programs.
Direct Comparison: A-10C vs F-35A
The Air Force expects the multirole F-35A Lightning II to absorb core elements of the ground-attack portfolio, though the two designs reflect divergent operational doctrines:
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Internal Cannon Armament: The A-10C carries the 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger rotary cannon with up to 1,174 rounds optimized for armor penetration, while the F-35A mounts a 25 mm GAU-22/A with 181 rounds.
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Precision Ordnance Capacity: The A-10 can haul up to 16 GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs on external pylons; the F-35A carries eight internally in low-observable strike trim.
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Network Integration: The F-35 acts as an automated sensor node, fusing cross-domain reconnaissance data across fifth-generation datalinks—capabilities absent from the legacy A-10 architecture.
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Operating Economics: Department of Defense cost data indicates the F-35A costs approximately 60 percent more per flight hour than the A-10C.
Anti-Access Doctrine Drives the Shift
The service’s operational pivot stems from strategic planning for high-intensity conflict against near-peer adversaries, notably in the Indo-Pacific theater. In environments saturated by integrated air defense systems (IADS), non-stealthy, low-and-slow platforms face severe survivability challenges.
Observations from the air defense umbrella over Ukraine have reinforced the Pentagon’s assessment that traditional low-altitude strafing runs are largely obsolete against modern surface-to-air missile threats. In heavily defended sectors, airframes must rely on stealth, stand-off precision weapons, or electronic attack suites to suppress enemy defenses missions tailor-made for fifth-generation fighters rather than titanium-armored attack jets.
Strategic Implications
While low-threat asymmetric campaigns and localized counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) engagements still demonstrate the A-10’s utility, the Air Force is wagering its future on multirole stealth and attritable autonomous systems.
As specialized close air support instruction fades from Nellis, ground units will increasingly rely on standoff strikes directed through digital forward air controllers, uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), and platforms like the light-attack OA-1K Skyraider II. The retirement of the 66th Weapons Squadron syllabus ensures that the tactics of dedicated low-altitude strafing runs will close out with the decade.
