1960–1970: French transports for a new republic

The Republic of the Congo, the former French colony on the north bank of the Congo river, is not the Democratic Republic of the Congo across the water at Kinshasa, and its air force is a separate and much smaller service. According to Wikipedia, it was established after independence from France in 1960 with French equipment: Douglas C-47 transports, Max Holste Broussard liaison aircraft and Bell 47G helicopters, later joined by Nord Noratlas transports and Sud Alouette helicopters. Wikipedia’s infobox gives a founding date of 29 July 1959, before independence; it is identical to the founding date of the Ghana Air Force and is not supported by any other source checked, so it is not used here. France also trained some officers, Wikipedia notes, but by the end of the decade Brazzaville was moving towards the Soviet bloc.

1970–1991: the Soviet years and the MiGs

In the 1970s the air force turned to Soviet equipment, beginning with Ilyushin Il-14 and Antonov An-24 transports, according to Wikipedia, and Soviet and Cuban personnel provided training. MiG-17F fighters and MiG-15UTI trainers appear in Wikipedia’s list of former types, without delivery dates. The largest step came in 1990, when, Wikipedia says, the fighters were replaced by 16 MiG-21MF/bis supplied by the USSR plus a couple of MiG-21US two-seaters. It was poor timing. Soviet personnel left in 1991 and, Wikipedia says, funding constraints then limited operations. defenceWeb, citing Jane’s and the IISS in 2013, listed a wider transport fleet built up over these years: an An-12, five An-24s, an An-26, a Boeing 727, a Fokker F28 and a Noratlas, with Mi-26, Dauphin and Alouette helicopters.

1997–1999: civil war, helicopters and mercenary crews

The civil war that began in Brazzaville on 5 June 1997, between forces loyal to President Pascal Lissouba and the Cobra militia of former president Denis Sassou Nguesso, was the air force’s only war in the sources checked. Six Mi-8 helicopters arrived from Ukraine in mid-1997, according to Wikipedia, and the government recruited Ukrainian mercenaries to fly attack helicopters, later using them in a bombing campaign of Cobra-held areas. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, reporting on a failed Puma deal in 2013, wrote that the war claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, "many of them victims of indiscriminate bombardment from helicopters". On 11–12 October 1997 Angolan fighter jets struck Lissouba’s Cocoye militia in Brazzaville, and on 16 October the Cobras, with about 1,000 Angolan troops, took the capital. Fighting continued until a formal end on 29 December 1999.

2001–2013: scrapped MiGs and second-hand Mirages

The war broke the air force. defenceWeb wrote in 2013 that it had "effectively ceased to exist as a viable and effective military organisation" since 1997, and that the dozen MiG-21s left were all grounded; Wikipedia says most of the fighters were scrapped in 2001. Lissouba’s government had also paid for four Puma SA 330L helicopters from a Johannesburg broker, invoiced on 1 June 1997, days before the war began: the ICIJ found they were never delivered, and that Congo later sued for repayment of the 7.7 million dollars it had paid. The replacements, when they came, were second-hand. Paramount Group, which had bought South Africa’s surplus Mirage F1 fleet, flew four F1AZs out of Pietersburg on 9 August 2010, two of them for the Force aérienne congolaise, defenceWeb reported. In 2013 an ex-Botswana CN-235 was being prepared for delivery.

2013–2026: a small force that is barely visible

Since then the Congolese Air Force has been almost invisible in public sources. Wikipedia’s inventory, which cites FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2024, lists two Mirage F1s, two An-32 and one Il-76 transports, a CN-235, six Mi-8s and one Mi-35 gunship; no official source confirms how many fly. In 2013 defenceWeb also listed four L-39 Albatros jets, which no longer appear. Military helicopters patrolled southern Brazzaville during fighting with former Ninja militiamen on 5 April 2016, defenceWeb reported, and the Pool conflict that followed ended with a ceasefire on 23 December 2017; the sources checked do not describe an air force combat role in it. No commander, base, order or accident was found for 2024–2026. The honest summary is that the service exists on paper, with a handful of aircraft whose condition is not published.