The Estonian Defence Forces date the airfield to 1940–1941, when the Soviet Union, occupying Estonia, laid out a military field on the site. After the Second World War it served as a reserve airfield, and in 1952 it became a main airfield. English Wikipedia, drawing on Russian sources, says a naval reserve field was set up here in 1945 for Catalina amphibians and Yak-9P escort fighters of a long-range reconnaissance regiment.

From the late 1960s Ämari was a front-line strike base. Wikipedia lists the 88th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Regiment from November 1967 to August 1984, flying MiG-17s, then MiG-21PFMs and finally MiG-27s, before it moved to Kanatovo in Ukraine; it also names a 321st regiment that flew the Su-7B and converted to the Su-24 in 1987, and a naval shturmovik regiment on the Su-24. The Defence Forces confirm the essentials: naval Su-24 attack aircraft and transports flew from here in the 1970s and 1980s. The regiment numbers are Wikipedia’s and were not checked against an official source.

The base was run by Russia into the 1990s. The Defence Forces say Estonia took over the airfield in 1994 and put it under the Ministry of Defence in 1996; Wikipedia says the Russian Air Force administered it until 1996. Either way, what Estonia inherited was a big runway and a lot of decaying concrete, not an air force.

The Air Base was formally created as an Estonian Air Force unit on 15 May 1997. Its first fleet was modest: the Defence Forces list two An-2 biplanes, three Mi-2 helicopters, one Wilga 35A and five gliders at Ämari that year. A Military Police squadron guarded the base until 2004; today it is staffed by active-duty personnel and civilians.

The more important investment was on the ground. The Air Surveillance Wing was formed here on 1 January 1998, an air sovereignty operations centre in 2000 grew into a round-the-clock air picture by 2001 and gained fighter control capability by 2006, and new radars replaced the Soviet P-37s: a TPS-77 at Kellavere in 2003, an ASR-8 at Ämari in 2004 and Ground Master 403s in 2013 and 2015. Robinson R44 helicopters arrived in 2002, and leased L-39 jets from 2006.

From 2008 to 2012 Ämari was rebuilt from end to end, with a new runway opening in the autumn of 2010. The point was not Estonian aircraft, which would never need a 2,750 m runway, but allied ones: the base was being prepared as a NATO airfield in case reinforcements had to fly in.

Estonia had joined NATO on 29 March 2004, and allied fighters had policed the Baltic skies from Šiauliai in Lithuania since then. After Russia seized Crimea in 2014, NATO strengthened the mission. On 30 April 2014 four Royal Danish Air Force F-16s landed at Ämari for a four-month patrol, and Estonian World reported the opening of NATO’s second Baltic air base two days later. Since 1 May 2014 a NATO quick reaction alert detachment has been based here.

The Defence Forces’ table of rotations reads like a roll-call of the alliance. Germany’s Typhoons followed the Danes in August 2014; Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands and Portugal followed over the next decade, and Turkey arrived in 2026. Italy brought F-35As in May 2021, and the Netherlands brought F-35As in December 2024. The table lists twelve air forces in all.

Most rotations last about four months and bring four to eight fighters with their ground crews. The Estonian task is to be the host: the base’s squadrons provide the runway, fuel, housing and security, and the Air Surveillance Wing controls the jets in the air. That division of labour is the Estonian air force’s whole theory of air defence.

Allies have paid for much of the base they use. ERR reported in December 2017 that the United States had already invested more than $32 million at Ämari under the European Deterrence Initiative, launched in June 2014, and that the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, signed on 12 December 2017, added $13.9 million to expand the fighter apron and fuel facilities.

By 2024 the runway laid in 2010 needed resurfacing. The Estonian Centre for Defence Investments contracted an €18.5 million renovation of the runway, taxiways, apron, markings and lighting, and in January 2024 Luxembourg’s defence minister Yuriko Backes signed an agreement to pay €12 million of it. Ämari closed to fighters from March 2024; NATO’s detachment moved to Lielvārde in Latvia, German Eurofighters being the first NATO jets to fly the mission from there, while Estonia’s own aircraft moved to Pärnu. Only allied helicopters used Ämari, and a German deployable control and reporting centre operated from the base from March to June.

The runway reopened on 8 November 2024, with a new dining facility and barracks under construction. Base commander Lt Col. Maanus Nigul said the goal was to ensure the inviolability of Estonian and NATO airspace. Dutch F-35s arrived on 1 December 2024 as the first rotation back.

The tempo changed in 2025. In March, Dutch F-35s from Ämari fired AIM-9 missiles at target drones off Rutja and reported 10 identification flights against Russian aircraft. On the morning of 19 September 2025, three Russian MiG-31s entered Estonian airspace near Vaindloo island and stayed about 12 minutes, with no flight plans, transponders off and no radio contact, according to the Defence Forces. Italian F-35s from Ämari scrambled and escorted them out; Estonian World reports that Swedish Gripens then shadowed them over the Baltic. It was the fourth Russian violation of the year.

Estonia requested NATO Article 4 consultations and summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires. Russia’s position, as Wikipedia summarises a Reuters report, was that the jets had flown in neutral airspace and violated nothing. The Estonian MP Eerik-Niiles Kross noted that the air control zones near Vaindloo do not follow the state border exactly, and argued that Estonia should lease fighters of its own.

In November 2025 the air force launched an operation to disperse air surveillance and air defence units away from their bases against drones, with Italian Typhoons in the air and an Italian SAMP/T battery on the ground. The first IRIS-T SLM firing unit reached Ämari on 22 June 2026. On 31 July 2026 Portugal’s F-16s handed over to Turkey’s 181 Squadron, the first Turkish rotation from Ämari, and the next day NATO renamed the mission Baltic Air Defence, ending more than 22 years of air policing in name as well as in practice.