Anápolis was built for the air defence of Brasília, which became the capital in 1960. English and Portuguese Wikipedia, drawing on the base’s own history, date the start of construction to 9 February 1970 and the start of operations to 23 August 1972. It was the first Brazilian base built for supersonic fighters, and it sits on a plateau more than 1,100 metres high, with a main runway 3,300 metres long.

The fighters were French. Brazil bought 16 single-seat Mirage IIIEBRs and four two-seat IIIDBRs, delivered from 1972 and designated F-103E and F-103D. They were flown first by the 1st Air Defence Wing, the 1ª ALADA, which was stood down on 19 April 1979 and replaced by the 1st Air Defence Group, the 1º GDA, nicknamed Jaguar. Two ex-French aircraft came in 1984 to make up for accidents, and after 1989 the fleet received canards and newer avionics.

The Mirage IIIs stayed until 2005. They were replaced by 12 second-hand Mirage 2000s from France, which the air force retired in December 2013, the same month the government chose the Gripen. Between the Mirage 2000 and the Gripen, the Jaguars flew modernised F-5EMs; by the 2022 retirement plan only one F-5M was left on the squadron’s books.

Brazil signed for 36 Gripen E/F fighters in October 2014, and Anápolis was always going to be their home. In July 2022, according to Poder Aéreo headlines, the opening of a new building for the 1st Air Defence Group and the arrival of Gripen support and training equipment. Fourteen operational pilots had completed conversion in Sweden by November 2023, according to the Diário Oficial as reported by Poder Aéreo, and all of them served with the 1º GDA.

The real milestone came on 24 February 2026, when the Gripen began air defence alert for the Planalto Central from Anápolis. Poder Aéreo counted ten aircraft at the base and recorded what had gone before: certification for air-to-air refuelling behind the KC-390, a live firing of the Meteor long-range missile and the first gun firing in Brazilian territory. The 2027 budget bill, published in September 2026, counted 12 Gripens delivered.

In mid-2026 six F-39Es of the Jaguar squadron went abroad for the first time, to the multinational exercise Salitre in Chile’s Atacama desert, alongside Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the United States and Paraguay. They came home on 12 July 2026, flying from Antofagasta to Anápolis, about 2,382 km, in two hours and fifty minutes.

Anápolis also houses the aircraft that see furthest. The Guardião squadron, the 2nd Squadron of the 6th Aviation Group, has been here since 2000 with the E-99 airborne early warning jet and the R-99 remote sensing aircraft, both built by Embraer on the EMB 145 airframe. Portuguese Wikipedia says the Learjets of the Carcará reconnaissance squadron joined them in 2017.

On 4 September 2019 Embraer delivered the air force’s first KC-390 Millennium at Anápolis to the 1st Troop Transport Group. The air force then had 28 on order; the order has since been cut to 19. The tanker-transport has refuelled the base’s Gripens, and later deliveries went to Galeão in Rio de Janeiro.

The base has a civil role in emergencies too. In February 2020 the government chose it to quarantine 25 Brazilians and four Chinese relatives brought home from Wuhan in two Embraer VC-2s, for a period of 14 to 21 days.

Anápolis has long been a stop on the way in, too. When the first three F-5Bs were ferried from Palmdale in March 1975, Poder Aéreo recalls, they called at Belém and Anápolis before landing at Galeão on 12 March. In 2006 the base hosted the third CRUZEX multinational exercise, with Brazil, France, Venezuela and Argentina among the participants, according to English Wikipedia; every later edition went to Natal. The base opens its gates to the public on open days, the most recent announced for 13 September 2026 with the Gripen, the KC-390 and the Smoke Squadron.