Until the 1960s the Israeli Air Force flew from airfields the British had left behind: Ramat David, Tel Nof, Hatzor and Sde Dov. Hatzerim, on the northern edge of the Negev west of Beersheba, was the first base it planned and built for itself. The IAF’s own history, as cited by Wikipedia, gives 3 October 1966 as the day it was declared operational, eight months before the Six-Day War.

The new base was given three asphalt runways, the longest 2,750 m according to Wikipedia.

After the base opened, the Flight Academy moved here from Tel Nof, Wikipedia says, and it has stayed. The IDF’s Hebrew site names Hatzerim as the home of the Flight School and describes its course as three years long, the longest in the IDF. Cadets who complete it graduate as fighter, helicopter, transport or drone pilots and navigators.

The school’s fleet has been renewed in the past decade. The M-346, known in Israel as the Lavi, replaced the A-4 Skyhawk as the advanced trainer; the Grob G 120 Snunit is used for basic training; and in 2024 the AW119Kx, named Ofer, began replacing the Bell 206 Sayfan for helicopter training. Israel Defense reported the first flight in May 2024 and a formal handover in November 2024, when the air force commander, Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, spoke at the ceremony.

The Ofer is a single-engine helicopter built by Leonardo in Italy for the first phase of helicopter training. Israel Defense gave its ceiling as 15,000 ft and its cruising speed as 130 knots, and said it carries Israeli-made navigation and communication systems and a head-up display that shows the student flight data in real time, a large step from a trainer designed in the 1970s.

Training has its losses. On 24 November 2020 a Grob G 120 crashed near Kibbutz Mishmar HaNegev, killing an instructor, Maj. (res.) Itay Zayden, 42, and a cadet, Cpl. Lihu Ben-Bassa, 19. The Times of Israel reported that it was the first fatal academy crash since 2008, and that the IDF concluded the aircraft had very probably stalled at low altitude.

Beside the base, outside its fence, is the Israeli Air Force Museum. Tourist Israel counts more than 150 aircraft on display, from Spitfires to F-15s and Kfirs, along with aircraft captured from Syria, Egypt and Jordan, the helicopter that carried Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat during the peace negotiations, and a converted Boeing used as a cinema.

The best story belongs to a MiG-21. On 16 August 1966 Captain Munir Redfa of the Iraqi Air Force flew one to Hatzor in Israel. Ynet’s account, published in 2007, describes the defection as the result of a Mossad operation, codenamed Diamond, rather than a spontaneous act. A month later the aircraft was handed to the US Air Force for testing; when it came back, it went to the museum at Hatzerim, where Ynet says it stands to this day. Redfa and his family were resettled in a Western country.

On the night of 5–6 September 2007 Israeli aircraft destroyed a building at Al Kibar in eastern Syria. Israel kept silent for more than ten years; on 21 March 2018 it acknowledged the strike, which the Jerusalem Post reported under the headline "After a decade Israel admits: We bombed Syria nuclear reactor in 2007". Syria has said the site was a non-nuclear military building.

According to Wikipedia, which cites the IAF’s own account of 2018, four F-15I Ra’ams of 69 Squadron from Hatzerim and four F-16I Sufas from Ramon flew the mission, and the aircraft that took part were later given a badge marking it. The IAF account itself could not be retrieved for this page, so the details are Wikipedia’s.