The A-10 era is over for this legendary Air Force attack squadron
For over 30 years, the 354th Fighter Squadron has put "the 18-year-old with a rifle" at the center of their A-10 mission. The Air Force is shuttering the unit this week.
Matt White
Posted on Sep 11, 2024 10:07 AM EDT
As inspirational plaques go, the one that hangs inside the 354th Fighter Squadron isn’t pretty. Just a rough slab of plywood, cracked in the corner, with some hand-drawn letters.
But its message is simple:
Our mission is an 18-year-old with a rifle. ATTACK!
It’s a slogan the 354th’s wing commander at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base wants the pilots who fly the 354th’s A-10C Thunderbolt IIs — attack pilots, they call themselves — to think about every time they step up to their jet.
A hand-lettered sign in the 354th Fighter Squadron. Air Force photo.
“It reminds every pilot here as they walk out that you are not the most important piece of this,” Col. Scott Mills, the 355th Wing commander at Davis-Monthan, told Task & Purpose. “You are here to attack the enemy and to make sure that friendly forces achieve their objectives and come home safe.”
The 354th will be officially inactivated on Friday, a major milestone in the Air Force’s plan to retire its entire A-10 fleet by 2029. The squadron flew its last official sortie in late June and the crews and maintainers of the 354th’s maintenance and flying teams (which are known as the Fighter Squadron and Fighter Generation Squadron) took their final combined photograph in July, with over 100 pilots, maintainers and other support personnel in formation around one of the squadron’s jets.
It’s a picture that Mills says strikes close to home. The 354th was his first squadron as a new pilot, soon after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/a-10-unit-354th-fighter-squadron-deactivated/
