Zona Militar, describing the base in June 2025, lists the aircraft that have defined Tandil: the Gloster Meteor, the Mirage IIIEA, the IAI Dagger and its upgraded form, the Finger, and since 2015 the IA-63 Pampa as a stopgap. Most of the buildings the F-16 programme is now replacing date, by the same account, from the 1960s, which says something about how long Tandil has been a fighter base and how little was spent on it in between.

The unit that made its name here is Grupo 6 de Caza. English Wikipedia, summarising published histories, says the group was formed in 1978 to fly the Dagger, the Israeli-built Mirage 5 derivative: 26 aircraft arrived in 1978 and 13 more in 1980, 35 single-seat Dagger As and four two-seat Dagger Bs. It worked alongside Grupo 8, which flew the Mirage IIIEA interceptor. The Daggers were later rebuilt as Fingers, which Wikipedia describes as brought to roughly Kfir C.2 standard, with French equipment replacing British systems in the final Finger IIIB form.

In the Falklands (Malvinas) war the Daggers did not fly from Tandil at all. They were dispersed to Puerto San Julián and to the naval air station at Río Grande in Tierra del Fuego, at the limit of their radius, and flew against British ships and troops from 1 May to the end of the fighting. English Wikipedia counts 153 Dagger sorties against ground and naval targets over 45 days and lists HMS Antrim, Brilliant, Broadsword and Arrow as damaged by cannon fire and HMS Plymouth and Ardent by bombs; these are attributions drawn from British and Argentine accounts, not an official tally from either government.

The cost was heavy. The same account gives eleven Daggers lost in combat: nine to AIM-9L Sidewinders fired by Sea Harriers, one to a Sea Wolf missile and one to a Rapier surface-to-air missile, according to the British-sourced breakdown Wikipedia uses. The Argentine Air Force, for its part, commemorates 1 May 1982 as its baptism of fire: it says 76 sorties were flown that day and names 14 of its men killed on that date, among them Lieutenant José Leónidas Ardiles.

The Mirage IIIEA/DA ended its service in 2015, and with it Argentina’s supersonic air defence. Zona Militar recalls that Tandil was then given IA-63 Pampa II jet trainers so that the brigade kept flying and its pilots kept some tactical currency; the Pampa, a subsonic advanced trainer built in Córdoba, was never meant to be a fighter. For about a decade the VI Air Brigade was an air-defence wing in name only.

That gap is why the 2024 decision matters so much here. When Argentina signed for 24 ex-Danish F-16A/B MLUs on 16 April 2024, Zona Militar reported that the VI Air Brigade at Tandil would be their home, returning the base to the role it was built for.

Tandil was not ready in 2024. Zona Militar’s June 2025 visit describes runway 01/19, 2,550 metres long, which is to receive an arrester system (possibly a BAK-12), together with work on hangars, taxiways and aprons and a new instruction centre to house simulators, including a DART deployable trainer. A government report to Congress, Jefatura de Gabinete Informe No. 142, confirmed in April 2025 that Tandil is the future home and that the jets would start at Área Material Río Cuarto in the meantime.

The first F-16 to reach Tandil will never fly. On the evening of 24 February 2025 the Ministry of Defence presented an F-16BM Block 10, numbered 25, as a ground-instruction airframe for pilots, mechanics and engineers; Defence Minister Luis Petri called the type “un verdadero salto tecnológico”. On 11 March 2026 the Air Force opened the CICMA F-16 maintenance training centre at the brigade. The flying jets, twelve of the 24 by 29 September 2026, remain at Río Cuarto until the works at Tandil are finished; no date for the move has been published.