Spanish Wikipedia dates the start of work at Taura to 28 August 1955, the same year the FAE gives for the creation of Ala de Combate 21 and a few months after the service’s first jets, Gloster Meteor FR.9s and Canberra bombers, arrived. The site, on the west bank of the Taura river 24 km east of Guayaquil, put the jets close to the country’s largest city and port and within reach of the southern border with Peru, where the 1941 war had been lost.

The FAE’s own history marks 1975 as the year twelve Cessna A-37 attack jets were delivered to Taura. The wing’s official page sets out its mission in three parts: counter-air, operations against surface forces and air reconnaissance. Its motto is “¡Taura, vencer o vencer!” — “Taura, win or win”.

In the oil-boom 1970s Ecuador bought a fighter force out of proportion to its size. It ordered ten single-seat and two two-seat Jaguars in 1974, the type’s only Latin American sale; the first arrived in January 1977, and on 14 January 1977 Escuadrón 2111 “Águilas” became the FAE’s first supersonic squadron. Three ex-RAF Jaguars were added in 1991 to replace losses.

Sixteen Mirage F1JAs and two F1JE two-seaters followed in 1979–1980 for Escuadrón 2112; Spanish Wikipedia dates the first F1 flight at Taura to 26 June 1979. Israeli Kfir C.2s came in 1982–1983 for Escuadrón 2113 “Leones”, after the Reagan administration approved a sale its predecessor had twice vetoed. English Wikipedia says the Jaguars were mostly held in reserve for a wider war with Peru, and flew ground attack in 1995.

The Taura squadrons’ defining day was 10 February 1995, two weeks into the Cenepa war. According to Ecuador, Major Raúl Banderas and Captain Carlos Uzcátegui in Mirage F1JAs shot down two Peruvian Su-22s with Magic missiles, and Captain Mauricio Mata in a Kfir C.2 brought down a Peruvian A-37B with a Shafrir missile. The FAE’s official history calls it the victory of the first air combat in Latin America.

Peru tells it differently. It accepts the loss of the A-37B but says one Su-22 was hit by Ecuadorian anti-aircraft fire during a low-level attack and the other was lost to an engine fire. English Wikipedia notes that the FAE never released head-up display video of the Su-22 kills. The Ala 21 page today says the wing carries on the traditions of the men who fought at Paquisha in 1981 and in the Alto Cenepa.

The Mirage F1s were retired in 2011 after more than 33,000 flying hours, and the Kfirs in 2012 according to Spanish Wikipedia. Their replacement was twelve ex-South African Atlas Cheetahs, paid for in part by cutting the Super Tucano order from 24 to 18. Spanish Wikipedia says they were handed over with only five years of support and deactivated in 2021; English Wikipedia says Escuadrón 2112 operated them until 28 July 2024. Either way, Taura no longer has fighters.

In September 2026 Infodefensa reported US Marines of Combat Logistics Battalion 8 doing recovery work on the base, supported by UH-60M helicopters and RQ-20B Puma drones. The magazine pointed to the runway, over 3,040 m, and the base’s position near Guayaquil’s port and the Gulf of Guayaquil, a drug-trafficking corridor. Ecuador’s government says the work is bilateral cooperation and does not make Taura a US base; about 61 per cent of voters had rejected lifting the constitutional ban on foreign bases in November 2025. No contract, budget or duration had been published.

For the FAE the episode underlined a plain fact: a base built for a supersonic fighter force now has none of its own. The air force’s combat flying is done by Super Tucanos at Manta, and Taura’s long runway is, for the moment, more useful to visitors than to its owners.