The Camp David framework of September 1978 committed Israel to return Sinai, and with it the air bases it had built or captured there, including Etzion near Eilat and Refidim in western Sinai. To make the withdrawal acceptable, the US Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, offered American help to relocate the bases. The US Army Corps of Engineers built two new bases, Ramon and Ovda, between 1979 and 1982 at a cost of about $1 billion, finishing early for an inauguration in May 1982.

Nevatim was the third. Wikipedia says it was built from 1980 to 1983 with joint Israeli and American funding and opened in October 1983, on a site where the Haganah had laid a rough strip in 1947 and which planners had once earmarked as an airport for Beersheba. Its construction required the relocation of Bedouin families, who received compensation, according to Wikipedia. The first jets to arrive, in 1983, were the A-4N Skyhawks of 116 Squadron from Tel Nof.

Israel was the first country to choose the F-35 through the US Foreign Military Sales process, signing a letter of agreement in October 2010, and named it Adir, ‘Mighty One’, according to Lockheed Martin. The first Israeli F-35 was rolled out in Fort Worth on 22 June 2016, a date Lockheed Martin’s page gives as its arrival in Israel; the first two aircraft actually landed at Nevatim on 12 December 2016, the date given by Wikipedia and the Israeli press it cites.

The IAF declared its first F-35 squadron operational on 6 December 2017. On 22 May 2018 the air force commander, Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, said Israel had become the first country to use the F-35 in combat. Wikipedia says the type has since flown thousands of sorties in the Gaza war. Israel has ordered 100 Adirs, after a fourth squadron of 25 was announced in May 2026, according to Wikipedia.

The government’s Boeing 767 ‘Wing of Zion’, Israel’s equivalent of Air Force One, also has its own hangar here and made its first official flight in July 2024, according to Wikipedia.

The next generation arrived on 28 May 2026, when the first Boeing KC-46A, named Gideon in Israel, landed at Nevatim to form 46 Squadron. Israel Defense reported that it will gradually replace the Re’em 707 tankers, in service since 1973, with both flying in parallel during the changeover. The squadron commander, identified only as Lt. Col. A., said the aircraft "can reach any point in the world."

On the night of 13–14 April 2024 Iran launched 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles at Israel, by the IDF’s count, in what it called retaliation for the strike on its consulate in Damascus on 1 April. Iran said it hit Nevatim and Ramon. A US official said five ballistic missiles hit Nevatim, damaging a C-130, an unused runway and empty storage facilities, and Israel said the base remained operational with minor damage. A seven-year-old Bedouin girl, Amina Hassouna, was seriously injured by shrapnel in the Arad area.

On 1 October 2024 Iran fired again, and this time many missiles reached the base. Wikipedia’s account, drawing on the Washington Post and analysts of Planet Labs imagery, puts the number of impacts at between 20 and 32, with a hangar and a taxiway damaged. The IDF said office and maintenance buildings were hit but no soldiers, weapons or aircraft, and that the attack had no operational impact. Iranian state media claimed that up to 20 F-35s had been destroyed; no evidence was produced to support that claim.