The Americans came to Korat in a hurry. On 9 August 1964, in the response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, eight F-105Ds of the 36th Tactical Fighter Squadron flew in. Squadrons rotated through on temporary duty until April 1965, when the 6234th Tactical Fighter Wing (Provisional) was formed under Col. William D. Ritchie Jr. In 1965, Wikipedia records, it flew 10,797 sorties totalling 26,165 hours with F-100s, F-105s and F-4Cs, earning a Presidential Unit Citation. On 3 April 1965 its 67th TFS flew the first, unsuccessful, strike on the Thanh Hóa Bridge.

On 14 March 1966 the provisional wing became the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, with permanent F-105 squadrons. Its targets were the heart of North Vietnam: on 16 March 1967 its Thunderchiefs destroyed the power plant of the Thái Nguyên ironworks, and on 11 August 1967 they joined the first attack on the Paul Doumer Bridge in Hanoi and brought down a span.

The price was high. Wikipedia’s figures for 1967 alone are 48 aircraft lost in combat and seven more in accidents, 43 pilots and electronic warfare officers killed or missing and 15 rescued. By then Korat held as many as 34 USAF units and about 6,500 airmen; it cost about $12 million a year to run and used some $4.36 million of munitions a month. On 22 December 1967 President Lyndon Johnson visited and spent the night.

Korat was also a laboratory for electronic war. A Wild Weasel detachment of F-100Fs, built to hunt SA-2 missile sites, arrived in November 1965; F-105F Weasels of the 13th TFS followed in May 1966, and the mission ran on with F-105Gs until the 17th Wild Weasel Squadron was inactivated on 15 November 1974. EC-121D College Eye radar aircraft arrived on 20 September 1967 to watch MiGs over the North, and 20 EC-121R Batcats from 19 October 1967 were tasked against the supply flow on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In September 1970 the 42nd Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron brought its EB-66 jammers from Takhli.

One of those EB-66s gave the base its most famous rescue. On 2 April 1972, during the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive, EB-66C "Bat 21" was shot down near the Demilitarised Zone. Its navigator, Lt Col. Iceal Hambleton, was the only crew member able to eject. The effort to bring him out lasted eleven and a half days; Wikipedia records that five aircraft were shot down, eleven airmen killed and two captured during it. He was finally recovered on 13 April 1972 by US Navy SEAL Lt Thomas Norris and South Vietnamese commando Nguyễn Văn Kiệt, who went in on foot at night.

On 17 November 1968 the 469th TFS took delivery of the first F-4Es in Thailand, and the Phantom gradually replaced the Thunderchief in the strike role. When North Vietnam invaded the South in 1972, Korat filled up again: F-4Ds from Kunsan in June, and on 29 September 1972 the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing brought 72 A-7D Corsair IIs under Constant Guard IV, with 1,574 airmen arriving by mid-October. From March 1973 the A-7Ds stayed on as the 388th’s 3rd Tactical Fighter Squadron.

The American era ran down with the war. The 347th Tactical Fighter Wing’s F-111s were sent to Nellis AFB when it was inactivated on 30 June 1975; the 388th moved to Hill AFB in Utah on 23 December 1975, and the US Air Force formally returned the base to the Thai government on 26 February 1976. Beside it, the US Army’s Camp Friendship, larger than the air base itself, had already closed in 1971 and is now a Royal Thai Army artillery base.

Thailand became an F-16 operator in 1988, when the first aircraft of Peace Naresuan I were delivered, and Korat became their base. More followed in 1990–91 and 1995–96; Peace Naresuan IV brought ex-USAF Block 15 ADF air defence fighters in August and October 2002 and July 2003, according to F-16.net, and the last seven F-16A/Bs of the Republic of Singapore Air Force were handed over in January 2005. Wing 1 flies them in two squadrons: 102 with the ADF jets and 103 with the OCU and ex-Singapore aircraft.

Americans still come back, as guests. Korat hosts the annual Cope Tiger exercise with the US Air Force, US Marine Corps and the Republic of Singapore Air Force; Wikipedia counts more than 1,100 participants, about 500 of them American, and Marine F/A-18s have used Korat for Cobra Gold since the 1980s. In 2007 Cope Tiger spread to Udorn as well.

Thailand’s F-16s went to war in 2025: six of them opened the strikes on Cambodian positions on 24 July, and F-16s flew again in December, according to Wikipedia and The Defense Post. The sources reached do not say which bases launched them, and both governments blame the other for starting the fighting. The oldest F-16s are to be replaced by Gripen E/Fs from 2025–2030.