King Khalid Air Base matters because of where it is: within reach of Yemen. Wikipedia gives 1960 as the year the base came into use and says it was designed and built by US Army and Air Force engineers in the 1960s and 1970s, with F-15 service facilities. The US Army Center of Military History’s official account of Corps of Engineers construction in the Middle East treats Khamis Mushayt and Tabuk as twin projects, first building cantonments for the Ministry of Defence and Aviation and then upgrading them with schools, medical facilities and family housing.

The altitude matters. At about 2,050 m, according to Wikipedia, the base is far higher than Dhahran or Riyadh; Wikipedia gives a single paved runway of some 3,780 m. The AIP entry for the aerodrome could not be checked for this page, so the runway designator is left out.

During the North Yemen civil war Saudi Arabia needed air defence on its southern border, and in December 1965 Riyadh ordered 34 Lightning F.53s and six T.55 trainers but they would take years to build. In March 1966 an interim contract called Magic Carpet bought six ex-RAF Lightnings, six Hunters, two radars and Thunderbird missiles. The aircraft arrived in July 1966 and, according to Wikipedia, were deployed to Khamis Mushait airfield near the Yemeni border, flown by mercenary pilots, which curtailed Egyptian operations over the border. One Lightning lost in an accident was replaced in May 1967. The main order followed: Saudi Arabia officially received its first F.53s in December 1967, and the new-build aircraft were delivered under Operation Magic Palm between July 1968 and August 1969.

In the al-Wadiah war of late 1969, Lightnings flown by Saudi and Pakistani pilots struck Yemeni militias after they captured a town in Saudi Arabia, according to Wikipedia, and on 3 May 1970 F.53 53-697 was shot down by ground fire on a reconnaissance mission; its pilot ejected and was rescued. The sources checked do not say from which base those missions flew.

In August 1990 the US Air Force sent its secret F-117 stealth fighters to the Gulf. Wikipedia’s article on their home field at Tonopah says 18 of them continued onward to Khamis Mushait, and its King Khalid Air Base and Khamis Mushait articles say the USAF launched its stealth attacks on Baghdad from here. The lineage article of the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing, by contrast, says its first squadron went to King Khalid International Airport at Riyadh; the two accounts are reported as they stand. Their record was later questioned: Wikipedia’s F-117 article notes that early claims of 80 per cent accuracy were revised to 41–60 per cent, and that on the first night the aircraft failed to hit 40 per cent of their assigned air-defence targets.

The wing’s numbers are published: 1,271 combat sorties, an 85.5 per cent mission-capable rate and more than 2,000 tons of precision weapons from 43 F-117As, according to the 37th’s lineage article, while the F-117 article gives about 1,300 sorties and 6,905 flight hours. On the opening night, 17 January 1991, RAF VC10 tankers of No. 101 Squadron also launched from King Khalid Air Base to refuel Tornado GR1s.

When Saudi Arabia led a coalition into Yemen’s war on 26 March 2015, Khamis Mushait became one of the nearest large bases to the fighting and a target the Houthis named. Their claims of hits are their own and were not independently verified for this page. The coalition’s statements, collated by Wikipedia, describe drones aimed at Khamis Mushait being intercepted on 5 and 21 March, 2 April, and 10 and 14 June 2021.

Open fighting resumed in September 2026; the coalition said on 24 September that it had destroyed missiles fired towards Taif and Yanbu. How the base and its squadrons are being used in the renewed war has not been published by the Saudi government.