Chile’s first military aviation unit outside Santiago was the idea of Arturo Merino Benítez, then director of the aviation school, who wanted aircraft dispersed throughout the country. Grupo Mixto de Aviación N° 1 was formed at El Bosque on 3 March 1926. Its first commander, Captain Armando Castro, went north with Captain Diego Aracena to find a home for it and chose Alto Hospicio, on the plateau above Iquique.

The move was made in stages, according to Infodefensa’s centenary account: to the El Buitre airfield at Arica in September 1927, and officially to Alto Hospicio on 18 September 1928. The group flew Vickers-Wibault fighters, Junkers R-42 trimotors and Vickers Vixen biplanes at first, then Curtiss Falcons, Curtiss Hawks and Gipsy Moths, and later Junkers Ju 86 bombers and North American AT-6s.

On 3 March 1975 — 49 years to the day after its formation — the group moved definitively to Chucumata, 45 km south of Iquique, the site it still occupies. The same year it received the Cessna A-37B, the light attack jet it flew alongside a long line of trainers.

Grupo 1’s job has long been to turn qualified pilots into combat pilots. Infodefensa describes its mission as training the officers who will become the air force’s future combat pilots. Its aircraft followed that role: five CASA/ENAER C-101 Halcóns delivered on 24 March 1983, the T-37 from 1994, and from 2004 the A-36 Toqui, which, by the time it was retired in December 2022, had flown more than 40,000 hours and trained more than 260 pilots in 34 generations.

The Embraer A-29B Super Tucano took over from 2009 after a US$120 million contract for 12 aircraft signed in August 2008; the group now has 22. On 30 September 2026 the Halcón XLI tactical combat course graduated at Los Cóndores in the presence of the commander-in-chief, Gen. Hugo Rodríguez, with the graduates receiving the red badge (piocha roja) of the combat pilot. Infodefensa reported the class as being prepared to go on to the F-16.

Grupo 3 is a much-travelled unit. F-16.net records its activation in 1928 at Maquehue, near Temuco, where it flew Vixens, Falcons, BT-13s and AT-6s, and then helicopters, before being disbanded in 1981; it was revived at Maquehue in 1992 with OA-37Bs and A-36s and disbanded again in 2003.

In 2006 it was reactivated at Los Cóndores to take the ten new F-16C/D Block 50s ordered under Peace Puma, the Letter of Offer and Acceptance for which was signed on 2 February 2002. They were the first new US fighters Chile had bought since the F-5. Its badge is an Andean condor diving through a stylised 3.

The Block 50s travel. Five went to Cruzex 2024 in Brazil with a KC-135E tanker; five more flew to Chabunco at Punta Arenas on 21 September 2026 for 20 days of training with the F-5s of Grupo 12, one of them photographed carrying an Israeli RecceLite reconnaissance pod. On 1 September 2026 the US ambassador, Brandon Judd, visited the squadron and a USAF pilot serving with it under the Mobility Partnership Engagement Program.

Los Cóndores does not have a runway of its own. The national AIP lists the field as Diego Aracena International Airport, operated by the civil aviation authority, the DGAC, with a single asphalt runway, 01/19, 3,350 m long and 45 m wide, at an elevation of 48 m. The air force base sits beside the civil terminal, and English Wikipedia describes the arrangement as a shared runway with the home of the First Air Brigade.

Behind the two flying squadrons stands a full brigade. English Wikipedia lists, besides Grupos 1, 2 and 3, the 24th Air Defence Squadron, the 34th Telecommunications Squadron and the 44th Aviation Infantry Squadron under the I Air Brigade at Los Cóndores. Their equipment and strength are not published in the sources checked.