1965–1985: a country without an army, and the coup of 1981

The Gambia became independent from Britain in 1965. Its first military test came with the coup attempt of 1981, led by Kukoi Samba Sanyang, which Wikipedia says left about 500 Gambians dead and in which Senegal intervened militarily. The Senegambia Confederation that followed brought a confederal army, and the confederation collapsed in 1989. None of this involved Gambian aircraft: the country had none, and the air power in 1981 was Senegal’s.

1985: an air force on paper

The Gambia Armed Forces Act of 1985 created the national armed forces with four branches, one of them a Gambia Air Force. According to Wikipedia, that air force "was never truly operational". No source checked names an air force commander, a unit or an aircraft from the Jawara years, which ended with Yahya Jammeh’s coup in 1994. After the coup, defenceWeb notes, the army received help and training from Turkey, Libya and the United States.

2002–2016: Jammeh’s air wing

The idea came back under Jammeh. Wikipedia says the government considered creating an air force in 2002 and sent pilots to Ukraine for training, and that a Sukhoi Su-25 attack jet was bought from Georgia in 2003 as the country’s first aircraft (defenceWeb gives 2004). The programme did not proceed and no air force was formally announced. defenceWeb’s profile, whose figures date from before 2017, credits an air wing of about 100 people with the Su-25, two AT-802A utility aircraft, an Il-62M, a Skyvan 3M and a Defender; the Il-62M, registered C5-RTG, was a head-of-state transport. Only the Su-25 and the Il-62 are confirmed by a second source.

2016–2017: the crisis, and other people’s aircraft

The one time The Gambia’s armed forces faced a real air threat was the crisis of 2016–17. Jammeh lost the presidential election of 1 December 2016 to Adama Barrow and on 9 December rejected the result. On 19 January 2017 Senegalese forces crossed the border under an ECOWAS mandate; Nigeria committed aircraft and personnel from the Nigerian Air Force, and Nigerian aircraft were seen flying over the country, according to Wikipedia. The Gambian army chief, Ousman Badjie, pledged allegiance to Barrow and said the army would not fight ECOWAS. Jammeh announced on 21 January that he was stepping down and left for exile in Equatorial Guinea the same day.

2017–2026: what is left

Since 2017 the air wing has all but disappeared from the record. Wikipedia says that in 2026 The Gambia possessed no combat aircraft and was not listed in FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2026; no source checked reports any aircraft delivered, donated or ordered between 2024 and 2026, and no air wing commander or base is published. This page therefore lists the Jammeh-era types as former, with their thin sourcing marked. The honest summary is that The Gambia’s security has rested on its army and navy and, in a crisis, on its neighbours, not on an air arm of its own.

Former fleet

Air Tractor, Britten-Norman, Ilyushin, Short Brothers, Sukhoi