1931–1958: British airfields, the Arab Legion Air Force and a service of its own

Military flying in Jordan began as a British affair. English Wikipedia, citing Ronen Yitzhak’s study of the service’s formation, says the Royal Air Force set up Jordan’s first air bases in 1931 to guard British interests, and that by 1948 Jordan was forming a small air unit with RAF help, the Arab Legion Air Force; Arabic Wikipedia dates the start of the ‘Arab Air Legion’ to 1950. Its equipment was modest: de Havilland Vampires and a Vickers Viking for VIP flights. On 25 September 1955 it became a separate service, the Royal Jordanian Air Force, as part of King Hussein’s push to modernise his forces. A few months later, on 1 March 1956, the king dismissed Glubb Pasha and replaced the senior British officers of the army with Jordanians. By 1958, according to English Wikipedia, the British had left and the air force controlled the country’s airfields. Arabic Wikipedia names Major Ibrahim Othman as the first Jordanian commander, from 1956 to 1962.

1958–1967: Hunters, a defection and a war lost on the ground

The Hawker Hunter made the air force a fighting service in the early 1960s, and it was a political one too. In 1962, German Wikipedia records, King Hussein ordered a squadron to support the royalists in the Yemeni civil war; the air force chief and two pilots defected to Egypt and the order was withdrawn. Hussein, himself a pilot, had survived an interception by two Syrian jets on 10 November 1958 while flying his own aircraft over Syria. Hunters fought Israeli Mirages on 21 December 1964 and again over Samu on 13 November 1966, when one Hunter was shot down and Lieutenant Muwaffaq Salti was killed; the claims of each side are set out below. Then came 5 June 1967. After Jordanian Hunters struck Netanya, the Israeli Air Force hit Mafraq and Amman shortly before 12:30. By its own account it destroyed all 21 of Jordan’s Hunters, six transport aircraft and two helicopters on the ground in two waves. The air force had been wiped out in an afternoon.

1967–1990: Black September, Starfighters, F-5s and the Mirage F1

Britain and Saudi Arabia sent replacement Hunters after the war, and in September 1970 they were used against the Syrian armoured incursion during Black September; on 22 September King Hussein ordered the air force to attack the Syrian forces, and the Syrian 5th Division began to withdraw that afternoon. From 1968, according to English Wikipedia’s F-104 article, Jordan received Lockheed F-104 Starfighters, with Pakistani instructors; they were expensive to run and went to Pakistan in the 1970s. In 1975 the Hunters went to Oman, where the Sultan’s air force used 31 ex-Jordanian Hunters in the Dhofar war. Northrop F-5s, some of them obtained from Iran, became the backbone; after the 1979 Egypt-Israel treaty, English Wikipedia says, Jordan chose the Dassault Mirage F1 over the F-16/79. Thirty-six F1s were built for Jordan in three versions. The sources checked record no Jordanian air operations in the 1973 war, and Jordan stayed a regional ally of Iraq through the Iran-Iraq war.

1997–2014: an air force rebuilt on second-hand F-16s

The 1990s were lean. To pay for upgrades, the air force sold seven F-5Es, which went to Singapore; English Wikipedia’s F-5 article dates the sale offer to 1994. The rebuild came with peace with Israel and American help: the first 16 F-16A/B Air Defense Fighters arrived in 1997 and 1998 under Peace Falcon I. Peace Falcon II added 17 more, upgraded in Turkey, and Jordan then bought used, already-upgraded F-16AM/BMs from Belgium (16 in Peace Falcon III, 2005, and nine in Peace Falcon V, 2011) and six F-16BMs from the Netherlands in 2006, bringing the fleet to 62. The Mirage F1 was retired by 2010 according to German Wikipedia, and 11 F-5E/Fs went to Brazil in 2009. The model was cheap and effective, but it meant flying other air forces’ used airframes for a generation. In April 2011 six Jordanian fighters went to a coalition base in Europe for the Libya operation; Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh said they were not intended for combat.

2014–2023: Muath al-Kasasbeh and the war against the Islamic State

Jordan joined the US-led air campaign against the Islamic State on 22 September 2014. On 24 December 2014 an ex-Belgian F-16 came down near Raqqa in Syria and its pilot, First Lieutenant Muath al-Kasasbeh, was captured. The United States and Jordan said the aircraft had a mechanical failure; the Islamic State claimed to have shot it down with a heat-seeking missile. Jordan’s government concluded that he had been killed around 3 January 2015; the group released a video of his burning on 3 February. Jordan hanged two convicted jihadists the next morning and launched what it called Operation Martyr Muath, with 20 F-16s over Raqqa on 5 February and, by its own count, 56 targets hit in three days. The air force also contributed aircraft to the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen from 2015, and, according to Reuters and the BBC as summarised on Wikipedia, struck drug-smuggling targets in southern Syria in 2023 and 2024.

2024–2026: drones over Amman, airdrops over Gaza and the Block 70 wait

Since 2024 the air force has been defending its own sky. On the night of 13–14 April 2024 Jordan intercepted objects from the Iranian attack on Israel that entered its airspace; the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Royal Jordanian Air Force downed about 20 per cent of the drones. Jordan’s government called it self-defence and said it would act the same against any country. It did so again in June 2025, when an intercepted drone fell on a house in Irbid. Its C-130s flew the first Jordanian airdrops into Gaza with France in January 2024 and the largest, to 11 sites, on 26 February 2024. The money problem remains: Breaking Defense put the 2022 defence budget at $1.9 billion, which is why the Block 70 order shrank from 16 jets notified to Congress to eight and then grew back to 12. The first are due in 2027. Until then Jordan’s front line is its upgraded second-hand F-16 fleet.