Four Maryland Air National Guard A-10C Thunderbolt II jets fly over Baltimore on Nov. 3, 2024, before an NFL game. Six Guard A-10s, four from Maryland and two from Michigan, need repairs and have been stuck at Naval Air Station Sigonella, Sicily, for about two months waiting for parts, according to service officials. (Sarah Hoover/U.S. Air National Guard)
NAPLES, Italy — A monthslong wait for needed repairs that saw six Air National Guard attack jets stuck at a Navy base in Sicily should come to an end this week, according to service officials.
Maryland National Guard maintainers are at Naval Air Station Sigonella completing repairs on the A-10C Thunderbolt II jets, Maj. Benjamin Hughes, a spokesman for the Maryland National Guard, said Tuesday.
“The six A-10s are projected to depart on (Thursday),” Hughes said in an email.
The aircraft, also known as Warthogs, were left behind at NAS Sigonella in November due to maintenance issues. Earlier, officials said that a timeline for the jets’ return was dependent on parts availability and that they anticipated the aircraft would be ready to fly back to the U.S. in a couple of weeks.
Four of the jets are assigned to the Maryland Air National Guard, and the other two belong to the Michigan Air National Guard, according to the Air Force.
Five needed repairs while the sixth plane was mission ready, Hughes said. He didn’t specify what repairs were required or the parts needed only saying that there “were various maintenance issues.”
“Air Force regulations require all aircraft to be fully mission capable before scheduling a transoceanic fighter jet movement,” Hughes said in an email on Jan. 8. “The standard for a fighter jet movement is six aircraft.”
The Air Force is working to divest itself of the aging A-10, a combat workhorse popular for its ability to fend off enemy ground attacks in areas where U.S. troops face little to no airborne threat. In 2024, the service had about 218 A-10s, the news site Task and Purpose reported on Jan. 7.
Last fall, the Air Force deactivated the 354th Fighter Squadron, which had flown the jets since 1991. That same month, the Air Force reported retiring 39 A-10s to date in 2024, more than double the year before, when 17 of the jets were sent to storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, according to a service inventory released in September.
Still, the Warthog has continued to play a sizable U.S. combat role, especially in the Middle East. Among other missions, American personnel are helping with efforts to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
A-10s supporting ground forces recently in Iraq “were successful in eliminating the ISIS fighters within a cave,” U.S. Central Command said in a Jan. 6 statement.
And on Nov. 29, the A-10 was flown to strike militants preparing a rocket rail near Mission Support Site Euphrates in Syria, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters during a Dec. 3 press briefing.
While the 175th Wing of the Maryland ANG was on deployment, most of its missions supported anti-ISIS operations, the wing said in a statement Nov. 1.
The deployment was one of the most challenging the unit had faced, with Maryland A-10s in eight previous combat deployments over the past 20 years, Lt. Col. Ryan Yingling, 175th Operations Support Squadron commander, said in the statement.
