The Air Force wanted the A-10 dead by 2026. Congress just told them to keep it alive until at least 2030 — and to maintain the training pipeline, the Weapons School billets, and the testing infrastructure the service had already started dismantling. The Warthog survives. Again. The House Armed Services Committee advanced its FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act markup on 7 June with a package of amendments that reads like a congressional intervention on behalf of an aircraft the Pentagon has been trying to retire for over a decade. The A-10 provisions are the headline, but the bill also includes new right-to-repair measures for military equipment and expanded counter-drone funding that reflects every lesson the Pentagon has absorbed from Ukraine.

The Immortal Hog

The A-10 Thunderbolt II has been on the Air Force’s chopping block since 2014. Every budget cycle brings a new retirement proposal. Every budget cycle, Congress says no. The pattern is so established it has become a Washington punchline — but the latest intervention goes further than any previous save. The FY2027 NDAA doesn’t just block retirements. It requires the Air Force to sustain the entire A-10 ecosystem: training new pilots, maintaining Weapons School courses, continuing operational testing, and keeping depot maintenance lines open. The service had already begun winding down A-10 training, closing the pipeline for new Warthog pilots. Congress is now ordering them to reverse that.

And there’s a kicker: any A-10 considered for retirement through 2030 “should be evaluated for potential transfer to another military department.” Translation: if the Air Force won’t fly them, maybe the Army or Marines will. It’s a remarkable slap at the service’s decades-long campaign to divest the jet.

Right to Repair, Right to Fight

The A-10 provisions grabbed headlines, but the right-to-repair amendment may have longer-lasting impact. The measure expands the military’s legal authority to maintain and repair its own equipment without relying exclusively on original equipment manufacturers. For years, defence contractors have used intellectual property restrictions to force the Pentagon to pay premium rates for depot maintenance, spare parts, and software updates on weapons systems the taxpayer already bought. The amendment builds on a growing bipartisan consensus that the current intellectual property regime — where a single vendor controls all repairs on a multi-billion-dollar weapons system — is both strategically dangerous and fiscally irresponsible. In a prolonged conflict, the ability to repair equipment in the field without calling the manufacturer’s help desk is not a convenience. It is a survival requirement.

Counter-Drone: The Ukraine Effect

The third major pillar of the FY2027 markup is expanded counter-drone funding. Ukraine has demonstrated — graphically, daily, for over three years — that cheap FPV drones can destroy tanks, disable air defences, and close airspace over an entire front. The Pentagon has watched, learned, and is now pouring money into solutions. The NDAA language emphasises “attrition-ready, low-cost interceptor solutions capable of countering mass drone attacks against military installations and deployed forces.” The era of shooting down $500 drones with $2 million missiles is officially acknowledged as unsustainable. Congress wants directed-energy weapons, electronic warfare solutions, and kinetic interceptors priced in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands. The A-10, the right-to-repair push, and the counter-drone investments share a common thread: Congress is telling the Pentagon that real wars — messy, attritional, fought with the equipment you actually have — matter more than the clean future the service chiefs keep promising. The Warthog may be old. The drones may be cheap. But the FY2027 NDAA says both are here to stay. Sources: The Aviationist, Air & Space Forces Magazine, CSIS, House Armed Services Committee