1926–1955: a coast guard, and a flying boat called Rán

Iceland has no armed forces; its Coast Guard, formally founded on 1 July 1926, is the nearest thing. Its aviation began modestly. English Wikipedia says the Coast Guard first used an aircraft in 1948, a Grumman Goose leased from the airline Loftleiðir, and acquired its own on 10 December 1955: a Consolidated PBY-6A Catalina flying boat from the Civil Aviation Administration, named Rán and registered TF-RAN. Over the following decades it also flew a Douglas C-54 and the Fokker F27; one F27, TF-SYN, is now preserved at the Icelandic Aviation Museum in Akureyri. Wikipedia does not describe any role for aircraft in the Cod Wars with Britain, which were fought by the Coast Guard’s ships, and none is claimed here.

Helicopters in the North Atlantic: losses and rescues

Helicopters became the core of the service, and they came at a cost. Wikipedia records a Sikorsky S-62, named Gná, bought in 1972 and wrecked without injury on Skálafell in 1975, and a Sikorsky S-76, again named Rán, acquired in 1980. In November 1983 Rán crashed in Jökulfirðir in the Westfjords on a training flight, killing its crew of four — the deadliest accident in the Coast Guard’s history. The Coast Guard kept going: an Aérospatiale SA 365N Dauphin II, Sif, arrived in 1985 and is credited by Wikipedia with the rescue of about 250 people, and an AS332L1 Super Puma, Líf, followed in 1995. Both are now at the Akureyri museum. Bell 47s, an MD 500C and an AS350 also served; their dates were not found.

2006: the Americans leave Keflavík

For most of the Cold War Iceland’s air defence was American. US forces returned to Keflavík under the defence agreement of 5 May 1951, and the base, by then Naval Air Station Keflavik, closed in 2006 and was handed to the Icelandic government. English Wikipedia says the US Air Force stopped deploying fighters there in September 2006. NATO’s answer, agreed in 2007, was Icelandic Air Policing: since May 2008 allied fighter squadrons have deployed to the security area at Keflavík, usually three times a year for several weeks. Iceland still has no fighters of its own. Instead the Coast Guard’s staff run the Iceland Air Defence System — four radar stations at Miðnesheiði, Gunnólfsvíkurfjall, Stokksnes and Bolafjall and a control and reporting centre at Keflavík, part of NATO’s integrated air defence — and look after NATO’s facilities there.

The fleet today: one Dash 8 and three H225s

The present fleet is four aircraft. TF-SIF, a Dash 8 Q300 (DHC-8-Q314) introduced in 2009 and fitted out like the Swedish Coast Guard’s, flies fisheries, ice and pollution patrols, search and rescue and medical flights, with a range of about 2,100 nautical miles. Three Airbus H225 helicopters carry the old names: TF-EIR arrived in March 2019, TF-GRO on lease on 6 July 2019 and TF-GNA, built in 2014, in April 2021; with two pilots, a hoist operator, a winchman and a doctor aboard they reach out to 613 nautical miles. The Coast Guard’s pages state the lease only for TF-GRO; how the other two are financed was not stated on the pages reached. The good side is a modern, well-equipped rescue fleet; the weakness is depth — one fixed-wing aircraft and three helicopters for an ocean area many times Iceland’s size.

2024–2026: centenary, drones and visiting fighters

The Coast Guard turned 100 in 2026, and in late September one of its helicopters landed beside the Harpa concert hall to open the centenary celebration, attended by President Halla Tómasdóttir and the Minister of Justice. That summer it tested something new: working with the European Maritime Safety Agency, a Tekever AR5 unmanned aircraft with a seven-metre wingspan flew about 300 hours from Höfn í Hornafirði, controlled by satellite, watching fishing vessels, shipping and aquaculture sites and searching for oil pollution. Allied fighters kept coming: English Wikipedia lists Norwegian, American and British F-35s and F-15Es in 2024, Finnish, Czech, Spanish and Belgian jets in 2025, and Swedish Gripens, British F-35Bs and Belgian F-16s in 2026. No new aircraft for the Coast Guard’s own fleet between 2024 and 2026 was found in the sources reached.

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אווירוספיאלי, סיקורסקי, פַּעֲמוֹן, מטוסים מאוחדים, דאגלס, יורוקופטר, פוקר, גרומן, יוז, מסוקי MD