page_title: United Arab Emirates Air Force
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: United Arab Emirates Air Force / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: An Emirati F-16F Fighting Falcon aircraft departs a KC-10A Extender aircraft from the 908th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron after refueling during a multinational exercise December 7th, 2009, in Southwest Asia.
context_page_description: The United Arab Emirates Air Force is the air force of the United Arab Emirates, part of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. Its predecessor was established in 1968, when the Emirates were still under British rule. Since then, it has undergone a continual reorganisation and expansion in terms of both capability and numbers of aircraft. Currently, the UAEAF has around 4,000 personnel and operates approximately 538 fixed wing and rotorcraft.
context_section_description: 2007 marked the culmination of the largest procurement programmes ever undertaken by the UAE Air Force, with the final deliveries of the 80 F-16E/F Block 60 "Desert Falcons" and approximately 60 upgraded Mirage 2000-9, giving the air force a considerable multirole capability. These two investments represented a total expenditure of around $10 billion, with additional money spent on infrastructure and logistics. A $6.4 billion contract with Lockheed Martin for the supply and support of the 80 F-16s was signed in March 2000, while a $3.4 billion deal for the purchase of 30 new Mirage 2000-9 and retrofitting of the 33 older UAE Mirage 2000s was signed earlier in 1998. Missiles were also purchased: 160 AGM-88 HARMs, 1,000 or more AGM-65 Mavericks, about 500 AIM-120 AMRAAMs, 270 AIM-9 Sidewinders and 52 AGM-84 Harpoons. In November 2017, the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces announced their intention to sign a contract with Dassault Aviation for the upgrade of its Mirage 2000-9 aircraft. French newspaper La Tribune reported the modernization would cost roughly €300 million.
  After a competition between the BAE Hawk, KAI T-50 Golden Eagle and Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master, the UAEAF announced the acquisition of 48 trainer and light attack aircraft, with the first deliveries to take place in 2012. The other training types that are thought to be near replacement are the 30 Pilatus PC-7s and five Aermacchi MB-339s serving with the Air Academy at Al Ain.  The MB-339 is also in use with the UAEAF flight display team, Al Fursan.
  The UAEAF has operated 20 IAR 330 Puma helicopters since the late 1970s. These have been recently upgraded to the IAR-330SM standard by IAR Ghimbav in Romania in cooperation with Eurocopter. These aircraft, supplemented by a further ten ex-South African Air Force reworked SA-330s, are expected to remain in service for at least 15 years. Although no replacement for the Puma fleet is required in the immediate future, the force will be supplemented by 26 Sikorsky UH-60M Battlehawks, with 390 AGM-114N Hellfire II missiles. 30 AH-64A Apache helicopters were modernised as well, to the AH-64D Longbow standard, and a dozen Eurocopter Fennecs were recently acquired for special forces use.
  The most important facility of the UAEAF is the Al Dhafra Air Base, with almost the entire fighter aircraft fleet located there. However, in order to prevent all of the air defence and strike assets being located at a single base, a $1 billion, completely new facility has been constructed deep in the Abu Dhabi desert, near the border corner with Saudi Arabia and Oman, near Al Gharbia, housing at least one Mirage 2000 unit. Al-Safran is believed to have opened between around 2008. It is 3,000 m long and has aircraft parking nearly the same size as in Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. A 4,000 m runway at Al-Safran Air Base was built around 2008.
caption: A UAEAF General Dynamics F-16 Block 60 developed specifically for the UAEAF. It is also called F-16 Desert Falcon.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "An Emirati F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft departs a KC-10A Extender aircraft from the 908th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron after refueling during a multinational exercise Dec. 7, 2009, in Southwest Asia. Aircrews from France, Jordan, Pakistan, the U.A.E., the U.K. and the U.S. are training together in the Air Forces Central area of responsibility. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller/Released)", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D3", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2009:12:07 00:00:00", "Image Artist": "Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller", "Image WhitePoint": "[313/1000, 329/1000]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[16/25, 33/100, 21/100, 71/100, 3/20, 3/50]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[299/1000, 587/1000, 57/500]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "836", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1496", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1608", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3389", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/5000", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:12:07 11:12:28", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:12:07 00:00:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Fine weather", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "70", "EXIF SubSecTime": "16", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "16", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "16", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4038", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2687", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R03", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1466", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "70", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Gamma": "11/5"}