The 735th Fighter Aviation Regiment was formed in July 1949 as an air defence (PVO) unit and moved to Karshi-Khanabad in 1954 from Yaroslavl-Dyatkovo, according to Michael Holm’s ww2.dk record of Soviet regiments. For its first quarter-century here it defended Soviet Central Asian airspace: MiG-15s from 1950 to 1955, MiG-17s to 1969, Su-9 interceptors from 1961 and, from 1980, the MiG-23M. Wikipedia dates the Su-9 era to 1961–1978 and the MiG-23M to 1978; the two sources differ by two years.

The Afghan war changed the regiment’s job. It was renamed a fighter-bomber regiment in 1981 and a bomber regiment in 1984, when it converted to the swing-wing Su-24. Its chain of command moved with it, from the air defence divisions to the air force of the Turkestan Military District, then to the 49th and 73rd Air Armies. Ww2.dk records that the regiment deployed “several times” between 2 July 1980 and 2 January 1989 to Kokaydy, near Termez, for combat duty over Afghanistan.

Uzbekistan took the regiment over with the base — on 1 January 1992 according to ww2.dk, on 30 June 1992 according to Wikipedia. Wikipedia says it was merged with the 87th Separate Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment into the 60th Separate Mixed Aviation Brigade and lists the brigade with 31 Su-24s, 32 MiG-29s and six Su-27s. That figure is undated; the Military Balance 2024, as quoted by Meta-Defense, counted Uzbekistan’s Su-24s and Su-27s as stored.

An agreement on US use of the Khanabad base for Operation Enduring Freedom was signed in October 2001, the Congressional Research Service records; GlobalSecurity dates Uzbek permission for US troops and aircraft to 5 October 2001, the day, Wikipedia says, that US Air Force Colonel Frank J. Kisner arrived. About 1,000 light infantry of the 10th Mountain Division followed from Fort Drum, and on 12 December 2001 the division’s headquarters under Major General Franklin L. Hagenbeck set up the forward land component command here before moving to Bagram on 15 February 2002.

K2 was a transit and airlift hub rather than a strike base. The 416th Air Expeditionary Group, the host unit from 2002, moved cargo from the United States onwards into Afghanistan by tactical airlift; GlobalSecurity says it averaged about 200 passengers and 100 tons of cargo a day, mostly by C-130, with C-17s bringing loads in. In August 2002 about 1,300 people were on the base, some 800 of them airmen, on a patch of about one square mile with streets named after New York thoroughfares.

Wikipedia and Military Times put the total who served there between 2001 and 2005 at about 7,000. No Uzbek combat sorties from K2 are recorded in the sources checked; the Uzbek side of the bargain was political, sealed by a Strategic Partnership declaration in March 2002 that promised “urgent consultations” if Uzbekistan’s security was threatened.

On 13 May 2005 Uzbek troops fired on demonstrators in Andijan, in the Fergana Valley. The government’s toll was 187 dead; other estimates run from several hundred to about 1,500, as Wikipedia summarises. The United States criticised the killings, and K2 paid for it: from June 2005, GlobalSecurity says, night flying was banned and C-17s and other heavy transports were restricted, pushing traffic to Bagram and to Manas in Kyrgyzstan.

At the end of July 2005 — 29 July, according to Wikipedia — Tashkent demanded that the United States leave K2 within six months. The Congressional Research Service records that the United States officially ceased operations there on 21 November 2005, and the 416th Air Expeditionary Group was inactivated the same month. Germany kept its small air transport base at Termez, which the CRS still recorded in 2013.

The Soviet base was dirty before the first American arrived. A baseline survey in November 2001 found jet fuel plumes one to three metres underground from decayed fuel lines, asbestos and low-level radioactive processed uranium from destroyed missiles, according to GlobalSecurity and Wikipedia. Veterans describe “black goo” seeping from the soil; Wikipedia quotes a June 2002 assessment that between 50 and 75 per cent of personnel would be exposed to elevated levels of compounds in the air.

A 2015 Army study, Wikipedia says, documented 61 K2 veterans diagnosed with or dead from cancer. In February 2020 Military Times reported a veterans’ survey of about 1,200 respondents in which 14 per cent reported cancer, and a bill, H.R. 5957, from Representatives Stephen Lynch and Mark Green. The Department of Veterans Affairs now lists Uzbekistan among the PACT Act’s presumptive locations for service on or after 11 September 2001.

Independent Uzbekistan’s own pilots began here. The Jizzakh Higher Military Aviation School was founded on 20 June 1994, but its first cadet flight, the institute records, was made at Khanabad at 08:05 on 25 April 1995 in a Yak-52; the first 97 lieutenants graduated on 14 October 1997. A decree of 18 January 2018 renamed the school and moved it to Karshi, and Wikipedia dates its arrival at Khanabad airfield to 1 September 2019, when Thales also delivered an H125 helicopter simulator for a new academy with room for 300 students.

Today it is the Institute of Military Aviation of the University of Military Security and Defence. On 9 June 2026 President Mirziyoyev was shown plans to restructure the air force and air defence forces, including simulators at the Karshi institute and mentoring at “Khonobod airfield”, Kun.uz reported. Where the J-10CE fighters unveiled in August 2026 are based has not been published.