1973–1991: two Swedish trainers

Sierra Leone came late to military flying. According to Wikipedia, the Republic of Sierra Leone Air Force was established in 1973 with Swedish help, which donated two Saab MFI-15 two-seat trainers. No reliable account of any further aircraft before the civil war was found for this page, and no official history of the air arm could be reached: the RSLAF website did not resolve, and the defence ministry’s pages gave no detail. What can be said is that for its first two decades the service was a token force for liaison and training. In March 1971 the government had relied on about 200 Guinean soldiers in Freetown — and a low pass by two Guinean MiGs — to steady itself after a coup attempt.

1991–1997: the RUF war and Executive Outcomes

The civil war that began on 23 March 1991, when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) crossed from Liberia, changed what the state needed from the air. On 29 April 1992 young officers of the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) took power. In March 1995, with the RUF close to Freetown, the government brought in the South African private military company Executive Outcomes. Wikipedia says the company fielded one Mi-24 Hind gunship and two Mi-8 transport helicopters, with armour, and that it drove the RUF back, regained the diamond fields and forced negotiations. Wikipedia’s Mi-24 article says three Mi-24Vs owned by Sierra Leone and flown by South African military contractors helped drive the RUF from the capital in 1995. The Abidjan Peace Accord followed on 30 November 1996, and Executive Outcomes left under international pressure.

1997–2002: coups, Sandline and the contractor gunship

On 25 May 1997 the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) overthrew the elected government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah; the Nigerian-led ECOMOG force retook Freetown in March 1998. The British company Sandline International supplied arms to Kabbah’s side, which became the “Sandline affair” investigated by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, whose report is dated 3 February 1999. Wikipedia says Sandline also brought the South African pilot Neall Ellis and his crew to Sierra Leone, where they flew first a Mi-17 and later a Mi-24 for the government against the RUF, twice helping to drive rebel attacks back from Freetown, and stayed until the RUF’s defeat in 2002. These operations are often described as mercenary flying; this page reports what the sources say the crews did and leaves the label to the reader. Their weakness was obvious: the state’s air power depended on a handful of foreign pilots and a single serviceable gunship.

Neighbours and outsiders in Sierra Leone’s skies

Much of the air activity over Sierra Leone in these years was not Sierra Leonean. Russia’s Federation Council decided to send four Mi-24 gunships with 115 crew and technical personnel for the UN mission in 1999, according to Wikipedia. Guinea answered RUF raids across its border with helicopter and artillery attacks on rebel-held areas of Kambia, Bombali and Koinadugu districts: Human Rights Watch found that at least 42 civilians, including 11 children, were killed in at least 13 such attacks between September 2000 and April 2001. British forces, which intervened from May 2000, flew Chinooks and Lynx in Operation Barras on 10 September 2000. Wikipedia’s article on Ellis says he also flew in support of Barras; the article on the operation itself does not mention him, so that claim is unconfirmed here. The war was declared over on 18 January 2002; Wikipedia gives 50,000–70,000 deaths.

2002–2026: an air wing with almost nothing to fly

In 2002 the air force was merged with the other services into the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces, and it has been a minor component ever since. defenceWeb, whose country profile was updated in November 2025, says the military has little serviceable equipment, the air force being especially hard hit; its order of battle still lists one Mi-24, two Mi-17s, a Bo 105C and two AS 355 Écureuils and about 100 air force personnel, a list that appears to be older than the update. FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2025 counts a single Mi-17. Wikipedia says that this one Mi-17 is not operable. Taken together, the honest answer is that Sierra Leone has, in effect, no working military aircraft in 2026, and no acquisition was found in the sources checked for 2024–2026.

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