It is 107 degrees on the range tower at Gila Bend, and a photographer is shielding his camera in the shade between passes so it will not overheat. Then the sound arrives — that unmistakable, chest-rattling BRRRT — and an A-10C Thunderbolt II drops out of the Arizona haze, guns blazing at the desert floor. On June 24 and 25, 2026, crowds gathered at the Barry M. Goldwater Range to watch the Warthog do the one thing it does better than any aircraft ever built. Most of them knew it was the last time they would see it here.

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base hosted its final public A-10 Range Day — the end of a tradition the 355th Wing had run roughly every other month for years. For nearly five decades, the growl of the Warthog’s gatling gun has echoed across Tucson’s skies. Now the fleet is winding down, and the range days are winding down with it.

A farewell that almost didn’t need to happen

Here is the twist: the A-10 is not actually dead. The type had been earmarked to leave service by the end of 2026, but Congress refused to let the Air Force retire it without a replacement. The 2026 defense bill barred the service from cutting the fleet below 103 aircraft through September 2026, and in the spring the Air Force confirmed the Warthog would soldier on until 2030.

So this was not the A-10’s last flight. It was the last of the public range days — a casualty of a training pipeline that has already closed. On April 3, 2026, the 357th Fighter Squadron graduated its final class of A-10 pilots. The developmental test detachment at Davis-Monthan shut its doors in December 2025. The jets keep flying; the ecosystem around them is being dismantled piece by piece.

The men who watched it grow up

Among the spectators was retired Lt. Gen. Glen “Wally” Moorhead, who has known the aircraft across 38 years of service. Moorhead delivered the very first A-10 to Davis-Monthan nearly half a century ago and was among the first pilots to fly the upgraded A-10C. For him, the day was about the people as much as the machine.

For Tucson, the range days have long been more than an air show. As the 355th Wing put it, the growl of the gun and the sight of a Warthog in the clouds became a wordless message from the base to the city that supports it — a message that the people inside the fence are mission-ready, constantly.

Still lethal, right to the end

The Warthog earned its reprieve the hard way. In 2026, A-10s flew combat over the Middle East against Iran, sporting a newly fitted nose refueling probe and electronic-warfare pods. Some came home wearing kill markings — little bombs and the silhouettes of Iranian naval vessels stenciled on their flanks. An aircraft written off as too old, too slow and too vulnerable had just proved it could still find and destroy targets that mattered.

That is the paradox the attack community has lived with for years: the jet everyone keeps trying to kill refuses to stop being useful. The pilots who fly it tend to fall for it hard.

Col. Jose Cabrera, the 355th Wing commander, watched the final passes alongside the families and civic leaders. The service called the demonstration “powerful and precise” — a living portrait of everything the A-10 mission has represented: discipline, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to the troops on the ground looking up.

The Warthog will keep flying until 2030. But the crowds on the range tower at Gila Bend have watched their last live-fire show. When the guns finally fall silent for good, Tucson will notice the quiet.

Sources: Davis-Monthan AFB / 355th Wing public affairs; U.S. Air Force; DVIDS; Stars and Stripes; Air & Space Forces Magazine.