Asunción’s airfield at Luque was inaugurated in 1938, according to the civil aviation authority’s history as cited by English Wikipedia. That was three years after the Chaco War ceasefire, at a time when Paraguay’s military aviation had come out of the war with Bolivia victorious but small, and was re-equipping with five Fiat CR.32 fighters and seven Caproni AP.1 attack aircraft from Italy. The old field stood where the Grupo Aerotáctico’s building is today, Spanish Wikipedia says.

The modern airport was a project of the Stroessner years. Law No. 618 of 22 December 1976 authorised it; the contractors Benito Roggio e Hijos and ECCA built it, and it opened on 20 March 1980 at a cost Spanish Wikipedia gives as about USD 35 million. It was named Presidente Stroessner International Airport. After General Andrés Rodríguez overthrew Stroessner in February 1989, the airport was renamed after Silvio Pettirossi (1887–1916), Paraguay’s pioneer aviator.

Through all of this the air force stayed put. Ñu Guasu Air Base is the military side of the same airfield, sharing its runway; English Wikipedia notes that the Grupo Aerotáctico now uses the airport’s original passenger terminal. It is a civil-military arrangement common in South America, and it means Paraguay’s combat aircraft share circuits with airliners.

For most of the Stroessner era the air force had, in the words of Spanish Wikipedia, practically no combat aviation; its fighter pilots trained abroad, and a dozen armed T-6 Texans donated in the 1970s were what it had at home. That changed in December 1979, when the first three of ten Embraer AT-26 Xavantes landed at Asunción’s international airport. The Brazilian licence-built MB-326 was Paraguay’s first jet combat aircraft.

The Xavantes’ best-known flight came on 2–3 February 1989, when General Rodríguez moved against Stroessner. Spanish Wikipedia names First Lieutenants Juan Antonio Rojas Duré and Gerardo Miguel Ángel Maldonado Gómez as the pilots who made low, fast passes over the capital in support of the rebels, and says the flights convinced the regime’s defenders that further resistance would only mean pointless deaths. The official death toll of the coup was 31; other estimates cited by English Wikipedia run from about 150 to 250.

The jets lasted another fifteen years. Taiwan gave six T-33s, the first arriving in 1991, and promised twelve F-5E/F fighters that never came. The Xavantes were retired in 2004 after 25 years and 32,641 flying hours, and Paraguay has had no jet combat aircraft since.

What replaced the jets were turboprops. Six EMB-312 Tucanos were bought in 1987; three were lost in accidents and Brazil supplied three more in November 2010. Pucará Defensa reported in January 2025 that the six serve with the 3rd Fighter Squadron, Moros, at Luque/Ñu Guasu, upgraded with Garmin avionics, thermal cameras and .50-calibre gun pods inherited from the Xavantes.

The training group is here too. Six T-35 Pillán trainers were sent back to ENAER in Chile for a USD 6.8 million upgrade under a contract of 17 August 2022; the last, FAP 0104, came home on 25 June 2025 to the Grupo Aéreo de Instrucción of the 1st Air Brigade. On 22 August 2025 President Santiago Peña stood on the ramp at Ñu Guasu as four UH-1H helicopters donated by Taiwan were commissioned, bringing the Huey fleet to eight.

The most important arrivals were the A-29 Super Tucanos. Four were received at the 1st Air Brigade on 30 June 2025, and in June 2026 four of them, with a C-212, left the brigade at Silvio Pettirossi for Exercise Salitre in Chile, the type’s first foreign deployment with Paraguay. In September 2026 the air force was waiting for its first Cessna 408 SkyCourier, meant to replace C-212s of which only two of five were flying.