New special ops wing planned for Tucson's Davis-Monthan base

Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base will become home to a new special-operations wing as its A-10 “Warthog” ground-support jets are finally retired over the next few years, under a new Air Force plan.

Local officials were recently briefed on the plan, which would establish a new “power projection wing” under the Air Force Special Operations Command at D-M, joining the base’s related combat search and rescue mission.

Tucson-area leaders have been anxious about what will happen to D-M as the Air Force looks to retire its biggest flying mission — three squadrons of A-10 Thunderbolt II jets — by the end of the decade with no clear replacement mission in sight.

Now, a new mission is in the works.

At the urging of Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Tucson) and other Arizona lawmakers, Air Force officials recently briefed local government officials and D-M supporters on a plan to establish a new wing of the Air Force Special Operations Command at D-M.

The Pentagon’s proposed fiscal 2024 budget includes $5 million in funding for an Environmental Impact Statement and an area development plan to establish the “492nd Power Projection Wing” at Davis-Monthan. The Air Force also plans to increase combat search and rescue operations at the base.

An Air Force “Site Activation Task Force” has already begun work to determine requirements and plan the transition for the new wing.

The head of the DM50, a Tucson support group for the base, said the new mission helps ensure the future of D-M and its billion-dollar contribution to the local economy for decades to come.

“We’re very optimistic about the future of D-M,” DM50 chairwoman Linda Morales said. “From what we’ve been told it’s an enduring, 30-year-plus mission for D-M, and it’s no loss of personnel, so it maintains the personnel levels, the economic impact that we’ve enjoyed.”

The last economic impact study on D-M in 2017 found the base had a $2.6 billion overall annual impact on the Tucson economy, including about $1 billion in direct impacts.

‘Good fit’

The Special Operations and search and rescue units also will have less impact on the community than replacing the A-10s at D-M with F-16s or F-35s, which are both significantly louder than the A-10 and other aircraft based at D-M.

D-M has been passed over as a base for the F-35, most recently in 2020 when it was a finalist to host an Air Force Reserve squadron of the fifth-generation fighter jet.

An Air Force environmental study showed that under one scenario, an estimated 1,506 people living near D-M would experience increased average noise levels of 65 decibels or more — a threshold the Air Force says can make an area incompatible for residential use.

The Air Force Special Operations Command’s flying units operate fixed and rotary-wing aircraft, including the CV-22B Osprey “tiltrotor” aircraft; various versions of the Hercules transport including AC-130 gunships, the EC-130 Commando Solo broadcast platform and MC-130 variants; as well as smaller reconnaissance and operations planes and the MQ-9 Reaper drone.

“I think it’s a good fit for Tucson, and I think it’s going to be a pretty seamless adjustment because it’s not the louder fighter jets,” Morales said.

Morales said Air Force officials have said they also plan to follow through with earlier plans to move some combat search and rescue units to D-M from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Michael Guymon, president and CEO of the Tucson Metro Chamber of Commerce, said the local economy is heavily reliant on aerospace and defense, and D-M is part of that.

“Any new operation, any new expansion of activities at the base is good for Tucson and good for Southern Arizona,” said Guymon, who is a D-M “honorary commander” and sits with Morales on the board of the Southern Arizona Defense Alliance.

Lobbying effort

In early April, Kelly and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Reps. Ruben Gallego and Juan Ciscomani wrote to Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, urging him to work closely with the Arizona congressional delegation and the Tucson community to secure the long-term future of D-M.

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“Given the advantages the base offers to the Air Force, from its very favorable year-round flying conditions and considerable range space to its proximity to leading defense industry partners, it should and must maintain a critical role in our national defense,” the letter said.

The Air Force has been trying to retire the A-10 since at least 2015, when it floated a plan to replace three squadrons of A-10s at D-M with F-16 fighters by 2019, arguing the slow-flying, 1970s-era Warthog would not survive in the contested airspace of potential future conflicts.

But lawmakers led by the late Sen. John McCain and former Sen. Martha McSally, a former A-10 pilot, blocked those retirement plans year after year, arguing that there was no ready replacement for the A-10 for its dedicated task of close air support of ground troops and pressing the Pentagon to complete a needed A-10 wing-replacement program.

Shifting plans

In 2021, members of Congress led by Kelly blocked an Air Force plan to retire 42 A-10s, including 35 at D-M, as part of a larger plan to create a center of excellence for combat search and rescue at the Tucson base, which already hosts a search-and-rescue group.

But the Air Force said that plan was conditioned on being able to start retiring D-M’s A-10s, so the deal was off, dismaying some local officials who saw the new search-and-rescue center as a way to guarantee D-M’s long-term future.

Last year, Congress as part of the fiscal 2023 Pentagon budget allowed the Air Force to move ahead with a plan to retire 21 A-10s. Those will come from an Air National Guard base in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which will get an equal number of F-16 fighters.

The Pentagon in its fiscal 2024 budget has asked to retire 42 more A-10s, including 35 at D-M, among more than 300 older aircraft it wants to mothball.

The Air Force wants to free up funding to buy more F-35s and F15-EX fighters, as well as new tankers, utility helicopters and airborne communications planes.

The planned cuts would winnow the A-10 fleet down to 218 planes, and while wing replacements could keep many of those remaining A-10s flying into the 2030s, a top Air Force official recently said the service will move to accelerate retirements to eliminate the entire fleet in five or six years.

D-M hosts one active-duty combat A-10 squadron, the 354th Fighter Squadron, as well as an active-duty A-10 training squadron and an Air Force Reserve A-10 training squadron.

D-M’s 355th Wing also hosts the 563rd Rescue Group, which operates HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters, the HC-130J Combat King II plane, as well as two squadraons of pararescue specialists, known as PJs; and related maintenance and support units.

The rescue units often train with A-10s, who have long provided close air support to rescue missions.

Based at Hurlburt Field in the Florida Panhandle, the Air Force Special Operations Command often trains with combat rescue units, and it commanded all of the continental Air Force search-and-rescue units from 2003-06, as part of a realignment related to the Global War on Terror.

After shifting back to the Air Combat Command, those units including the 563rd Rescue Group are now under the 355th Wing.

Multi-mission base

D-M, which won the prestigious Commander in Chief’s Installation Excellence Award in 2012 and 2018, also hosts the 55th Electronic Combat Group; the headquarters of the 12th Air Force; and the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, the Air Force’s main “boneyard” for retired aircraft.

D-M also supports Border Patrol aviation and Air National Guard drone, homeland security and training missions.

The 55th Electronic Combat Group, which was continuously deployed during the conflicts in the Middle East, has up to now conducted aerial surveillance and jamming using about a dozen EC-130H Compass Call planes — converted versions of the workhorse Hercules transport.

The Air Force is in the process of transitioning the group to use converted Gulfstream 550 business jets known as EC-37Bs, the first of which are set to enter service later this year as the 55th Electronic Combat Group is expected to stay at D-M.