GLENDALE — The passing of the baton happens every two years at Luke Air Force Base.
Friday, base command was transferred, in a brief ceremony, from Brig. Gen. Gregory “Freddy” Kreuder to Brig. Gen. Jason M. Rueschhoff.
He takes command of the 56th Fighter Wing.
Rueschhoff was named the Deputy Commander, Seventh Air Force, Air Forces Korea, and Chief of Staff, Air Component Command, Osan Air Base, South Korea, in June of last year, just after he was promoted from colonel to brigadier general.
He’s a 1997 Air Force Academy graduate who holds three master’s degrees. He was initially trained as a pilot of the A-10 Warthog, logging more than 2,800 flight hours in that aircraft, in the F-35 and in the AH-64 Apache helicopter.
He has flown in operations Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom and has logged 267 combat flight hours.
Rueschhoff has had assignments at bases around the world, including multiple assignments in coveted Hawaii.
“I am extremely excited to be a part of this,” Rueschhoff said during the ceremony, which was broadcast live on social media. “Thanks so much to Gen. Kreuder for the conversations we’ve had, and the trust he’s shown in me already.”
This will be Rueschhoff’s second command in Arizona, having commanded te 355th Operations Support Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson — the base where he first learned to fly the A-10 — from July 2012 to June 2014.
Rueschhoff has also flown the F-35A.
The 56th Fighter Wing is the Air Force’s only active-duty F-16 training wing and one of two F-35 training wings.
As base commander, Rueschoff is also the steward of the the Barry M. Goldwater Range — a stretch of 1.7 million acres of Sonoran Desert between Yuma and Tucson, used for training.
Glendale Mayor Jerry Weters was among those in attendance at Friday’s ceremony.
Kreuder took over from Brig. Gen. Todd D. Canterbury in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020. He oversaw two years during a tumultuous time for the U.S. military that included not only COVID-19 and other physical health concerns, but also a controversial 2020 election cycle and major upheaval in many parts of the globe to monitor.
Luke Days, the base’s popular air show held every other year, usually attracts hundreds of thousands of attendees.
However, the event wasn’t held in 2020 or 2021 due to COVID-19, and Kreuder announced in February that the 2022 version of the show would be canceled as well. He cited ongoing supply chain issues, rising costs of products and services, and other related effects of COVID-19 as reasons for canceling the March 2022 show.
On Feb. 10, a contracted Mirage F1 fighter crashed, but the pilot ejected safely and didn’t suffer any major injruies. The French plane, used to imitate foreign or hostile aircrft in training, operated out of the base. It crashed around 11 a.m. in an unpopulated area north of Sun City Festival.
Kreuder, a command pilot with more than 2,900 flying hours, including 350 combat hours, came to Luke from U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Iraq, where he served as senior defense official, Defense Attaché.
“To the men and women of the 56th Fighter Wing, I thank you for all that you do, every single day,” Kreuder said at Friday’s ceremony. “You help train the world’s greatest fighter pilots, through the pandemic, getting them and keeping them combat-ready.”
Jason W. Brooks is a News editor for the Daily Independent and the Chandler Independent.
He covers the Chandler area for both yourvalley.net and the monthly print edition while writing for and assisting in the production of the Daily Independent.
Brooks is a well-traveled journalist who has documented life in small American communities in nearly all U.S. time zones.
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and in suburban Los Angeles, he has covered community news in California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and northern Arizona.
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