Ben Guerir was born of the early Cold War. In 1950 the United States began what Wikipedia calls a crash programme to build airfields in French North Africa for Strategic Air Command, whose B-47 bombers could not yet reach the Soviet Union from home. Ben Guerir, on the plain between Casablanca and Marrakech, opened in 1951 as one of five such American bases; the 5th Air Division, which ran them, counted three bomber bases in Morocco: Sidi Slimane, Ben Guerir and Nouasseur.

The bases were built while Morocco was a French protectorate, and Morocco became independent in 1956 with American bombers already on its soil. Wikipedia names the 3926th Air Base Group as the host unit, and records that in 1956 the entire RB-47E force of the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing spent 90 days at Ben Guerir on temporary duty. KC-97 tankers flew alongside the bombers.

Ben Guerir was also listed among the Operation Reflex bases from which SAC kept armed bombers on alert from October 1957, typically on 90-day tours. That arrangement did not survive Moroccan independence for long: under an understanding reached in 1959 the Americans left, and SAC operations at Ben Guerir ended in 1963.

A Space Shuttle that lost a main engine too late to turn back to Florida but too early to reach orbit needed a long runway on the far side of the Atlantic. NASA called these transoceanic abort landing, or TAL, sites. Casablanca was used as a contingency landing site from January 1986; in July 1988, according to NASA’s own fact sheet, Ben Guerir replaced it.

Ben Guerir had what an orbiter needed. Wikipedia gives its single runway, 18/36, as 4,182 metres long and 61 metres wide, with a 305-metre underrun and a 762-metre overrun, 4,791 metres of paved surface in all – a legacy of a field built for heavily loaded B-47s in the North African heat. Its position on the shuttle’s ascent track meant, in Wikipedia’s words, that diversion would require minimal use of fuel.

Wikipedia records that NASA installed a microwave landing system and a TACAN beacon in 1988. The site was manned for launches from then on. NASA’s fact sheet of December 2006 says Ben Guerir was last used for STS-111 in June 2002 and was being closed after supporting 83 missions; Wikipedia gives 2005 for its deactivation. No orbiter ever had to land there; STS-111 itself landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, per Wikipedia.

The Royal Armed Forces publish no order of battle, and Morocco has not said which squadrons fly from Ben Guerir. Even its number is disputed. Wikipedia lists it as BAFRA No. 1, the first Royal Air Force base; Morocco World News in 2021 and Hespress in 2026, both citing the Spanish defence site Defensa, call it the sixth air base. The state news agency MAP, by contrast, gives the number 1 to Salé. Without an official list, this page gives both readings.

Two press reports describe its present role. In November 2021 Morocco World News, citing Defensa, said the sixth air base at Ben Guerir would be the second of two bases rehabilitated for Morocco’s 25 new F-16 Block 72s and 24 upgraded F-16s, with arresting systems, an engine test area, safety simulators and a secure facility for combat data; the two projects together would cost over 4.7 billion dollars. Delivery was then expected in 2024; no Block 72 had been publicly delivered by October 2026.

In June 2026 Hespress reported, citing Defensa’s reading of satellite imagery, that Akinci drones delivered in early 2025 were operating from the Sixth Air Base in Ben Guerir with mobile ground-control stations, and that Morocco’s first Bayraktar TB2s had entered service there in September 2021. The Moroccan armed forces have not confirmed either account. Morocco’s use of drones over Western Sahara since 2020 is covered on the air force page, with each side’s position; no published source ties a particular strike to this base.