Military flying at Łask begins in the early Stalinist years. According to the aviation historian Karol Placha Hetman, the 31st Fighter Aviation Regiment (31. Pułk Lotnictwa Myśliwskiego) began forming at the airfield in 1952 and had its basic structure and flying training in place by 1953. It belonged to the 5th Fighter Aviation Division alongside the 1st Regiment in Warsaw and the 13th at Łęczyca, and flew licence-built Lim-1 and Lim-2 jets, the Polish versions of the MiG-15. The English-language Wikipedia dates the airfield’s construction to 1957, which the unit histories contradict; the regiment was flying from it five years earlier.

On 7 November 1957, the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Second Lieutenant Bogdan Kożuchowski, born in 1933, took off from Łask and flew his fighter to south-western Sweden. The historian Krzysztof Lesiakowski of the University of Łódź calls it the last escape by fighter aircraft from the People’s Republic. A communist court sentenced Kożuchowski to death in absentia. He settled in the United States, concealed his past, worked in a factory in Chicago, and took his own life in April 1997. One enthusiast history identifies the aircraft as Lim-2 number 1919 and gives his rank as captain; the academic study gives second lieutenant.

The escape had consequences for everyone left behind. Lesiakowski records organisational changes in the air force and a tightening of counter-intelligence surveillance at Łask. Placha Hetman writes that the regiment was taken out of the fighter division, renamed the 31st Training and Combat Aviation Regiment in 1958, and given worn-out MiG-15s; for the next decade it trained pilots coming out of the schools at Dęblin and Radom. In 1963 the 2nd Fighter Aviation Regiment moved in from Kraków, where its airfield had closed, and the 31st was disbanded when historic unit numbers were restored in the late 1960s.

The number Łask still carries in its traditions comes from the Second World War. The 10th Fighter Aviation Regiment was formed on Soviet orders in September 1944 as part of the Polish 3rd Fighter Aviation Division; sources give the start of formation as 20 or 23 September. It flew Yakovlev fighters, entered combat in February 1945 and took part in the Berlin operation. In January 1946 it was renumbered the 2nd Fighter Aviation Regiment and based at Kraków, the same regiment that later moved to Łask.

The 10th number returned at Łask in the 1960s. Sources disagree on the year: one account dates the renumbering of the 2nd Regiment to 1963, while Placha Hetman’s histories give 1967 to 1968, with the first six MiG-21PF fighters arriving in April 1968. The regiment served the Air Defence of the Country (WOPK) in the 1st Air Defence Corps, alongside the 1st Regiment at Mińsk Mazowiecki, and from 1996 in the 3rd Air Defence Corps. Its job was to intercept intruders heading for central Poland.

Over 35 years the regiment flew the MiG-21PF, PFM, M, MF, U and UM, seven of the ten MiG-21 versions Poland operated, plus Lim-2 and Lim-5 fighters and TS-11 Iskra trainers. In 1991 it had 22 MiG-21 fighters and 5 trainers. The work was not without cost. An enthusiast compilation of Polish MiG-21 losses lists three fatal accidents in the regiment: Lieutenant Wiesław Bolek near Szydłowiec in April 1970, Captain Walenty Giegiel over the Nowa Dęba range in March 1979, and Lieutenant Colonel Roman Iwanow on the airfield at Łask in October 1980. These names come from a single non-official source.

NATO membership in 1999 dissolved the old regiments. The 10th Fighter Aviation Regiment was disbanded on 31 December 2000, and on 1 January 2001 two new units took its place: the 32nd Air Base (32. Baza Lotnicza), which ran the airfield, and the 10th Tactical Air Squadron (10. Eskadra Lotnictwa Taktycznego), which flew. The squadron was declared ready on 31 March 2001 and kept MiG-21MFs on NATO air defence duty until a farewell ceremony on 24 January 2003 closed 35 years of the type at Łask.

For five years the squadron flew TS-11 Iskra jet trainers while it waited for the F-16C/D Block 52+ Jastrząb, bought in 2003. On 3 October 2008 nine F-16s landed at Łask, seven single-seat F-16Cs and two F-16Ds, watched by Deputy Defence Minister Zenon Kosiniak-Kamysz and the Air Force commander, General Andrzej Błasik. The 48 Polish F-16s were divided between Poznań-Krzesiny and Łask; in 2014 the President’s office put the Łask share at 16. One enthusiast history puts the cost of adapting the airfield for the F-16 at about 840 million zloty; no official figure was found.

On 1 January 2010 the airfield unit and the squadron were merged into the 32nd Tactical Air Base, part of the 2nd Tactical Air Wing in Poznań; its first commander was Colonel Dariusz Malinowski. In April 2017 the F-16s moved to Poznań-Krzesiny while the runway was rebuilt. The original 2,500 metres were relaid in concrete, a further 500 metres was built with American money, and drainage, lighting, a BAK-14 arrester system and Ice Alert runway sensors were installed. The work cost 99,876,400 zloty and was completed in 2019.

Under a Polish-American agreement of June 2011, the US Air Force activated an Aviation Detachment at Łask on 9 November 2012. Formally Detachment 1, 52nd Operations Group, it answers to the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem in Germany. It is an allied unit, not a Polish one. Its job is to prepare the base for American aircraft that rotate in, usually four times a year, to train with Polish crews. Air Force Magazine described it at the time as the first full-time presence of US military personnel on Polish soil.

The detachment has ten or so permanent airmen; USAFE said a rotation could bring up to 250 more, while Air Force Magazine gave 200, so the surge figure is best read as 200 to 250. Rotations began in 2013. After Russia seized Crimea, the President’s office announced 12 more American F-16s and about 300 US personnel for Łask in March 2014, and in June 2014 rotation 14-3 brought 18 F-16s from Spangdahlem with nearly 300 people. The detachment also runs C-130 rotations, the first Air National Guard one of which flew from Powidz in October 2014.

The American presence became continuous after February 2022. US F-15s from RAF Lakenheath landed at Łask on 10 February 2022; in April Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 312 brought F/A-18 Hornets to replace USAF F-15Es; and on 1 April 2024 four F-35As of the 48th Fighter Wing arrived. Oklahoma Air National Guard F-16s followed in July 2024. The 2019 US-Polish defence declaration also said Łask would host a USAF remotely piloted aircraft squadron; the American Reapers in Poland have in practice flown from Mirosławiec, and the sources consulted do not show that squadron at Łask.

The F-16s of Łask have flown far from central Poland. From 20 June 2016 to 30 June 2018 Polish F-16s flew reconnaissance for the coalition against Islamic State from Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in Kuwait, the first operational deployment of Polish F-16s abroad. Four aircraft with DB-110 and Sniper pods flew about 3,600 hours; 621 soldiers and 12 civilians served in four rotations, drawn from both F-16 bases. The last mission was flown on 16 June 2018.

The mission ended with a ceremony at Łask, where the base commander, Colonel Tomasz Jatczak, told the returning crews that their service had helped defeat Islamic State and improve security in an unstable region. The contingent commander, Lieutenant Colonel Przemysław Struj, handed the national flag to the Inspector of the Air Force, Brigadier General Mirosław Jemielniak. The deployment overlapped the runway rebuild, so the base’s own aircraft were then flying from Krzesiny.

From late December 2019 to May 2020 Łask supplied the ninth Polish Baltic Air Policing contingent, PKW Orlik, at Ämari in Estonia: four F-16s and about 150 people under Lieutenant Colonel Krzysztof Duda. They flew more than 100 missions and more than 500 hours, including a dozen or more real Alpha Scrambles. On the last, on 28 April 2020, the duty pair launched against two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers and their fighter escort.

Poland ordered 32 F-35As in January 2020 for 4.6 billion dollars net, with eight simulators and US training for 24 pilots and 90 technicians. Łask was the natural choice: in mid-2019 General Ireneusz Nowak judged its F-16 infrastructure the best prepared for modern aircraft, and Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak confirmed the choice. Early plans put all 32 aircraft there; the fleet is now to be split 16 and 16 between Łask and Świdwin, with deliveries due to finish between 2029 and 2030 depending on the source.

The F-35 zone was built from scratch on forested land in about two years and finished in November 2025: ten construction tasks including an operations centre with compartmentalised access and a maintenance hangar about 120 metres wide. Polska Zbrojna reported that the base headcount would grow by about a quarter. The base commander, Colonel Krzysztof Duda, said the security regime made the zone resemble a secret James Bond base.

On 22 May 2026 the first three Polish F-35As, serials 3509 to 3511, landed at Łask from Fort Worth via Lajes in the Azores; eight earlier aircraft stayed at Ebbing in Arkansas for training. President Karol Nawrocki formally received them on 12 June 2026. Five more, 3512 to 3516, arrived on 28 August 2026. The Air Force plans 14 in Poland by the end of 2026, crew certification and combat duty from mid-2027, and full operational capability in 2030. For now Łask flies F-16s and F-35s side by side, and the F-16s face an upgrade to the F-16V standard.