Surabaya has been a naval air town since the Dutch era. In 1922 the Netherlands’ naval aviation service built Morokrembangan, a naval air base by the harbour. Wikipedia says that as traffic grew the field became congested and could not be expanded for lack of land. The answer was a new airfield at Waru, south of the city in what is now Sidoarjo.

Project Waru was, in Wikipedia’s words, Indonesia’s first major airfield project since independence. Two French companies ran it, the consultant Compagnie d’Ingénieurs et Techniciens and the contractor Société de Construction des Batignolles, between 1960 and 1964, moving about 11.2 million cubic metres of material. The runway was declared operational on 22 September 1963, seven months ahead of schedule, and the first aircraft to land were naval. Prime Minister Djuanda Kartawidjaja, who resolved a financial crisis during construction, died on 7 November 1963, and the base was named after him. President Sukarno inaugurated it on 12 August 1964.

Juanda opened at the height of Sukarno’s confrontations, first over Western New Guinea and then with Malaysia, and the navy’s air arm was briefly a strike force. Indonesian Wikipedia lists a 500th Squadron for torpedo bombing among the arm’s 1960s squadrons, alongside anti-submarine, transport, helicopter, patrol and training units numbered from 100 to 900.

According to English Wikipedia’s Il-28 article, the 500th Squadron at Juanda received eleven Il-28T torpedo bombers and two Il-28U trainers in 1965, and later took over the air force’s Il-28s, which that service had retired by 1964. Indonesian Wikipedia describes the decade from 1955 to 1965 as the arm’s offensive period. It did not last. All the remaining naval Il-28s were retired by 1972. No combat use of Juanda’s Il-28s is recorded in the sources reached.

Juanda is unusual among big Asian airports: the Indonesian Navy owns the land, and the passenger terminal functions as a civil enclave. Wikipedia describes Naval Air Station Juanda as a major Class A installation and the headquarters of the Naval Aviation Center, and notes that the air force’s Muljono Air Force Base, a Type B base, also operates on the airfield.

The navy’s ownership shows in the airport’s daily life. On 7 February 2025 Antara reported that the naval air station, the airport’s security unit and customs had stopped a shipment of 60,205 lobster larvae worth more than 9 billion rupiah on a scheduled flight to Singapore, acting, the commander of the Naval Aviation Center said, on intelligence his command had received. The naval aviation anniversary is held on the apron by the navy’s hangars: on 17 June 2023, for the 67th, Bonanza trainers of Squadron 200 flew a display.

Juanda has also been the constant through the arm’s many changes of name. Indonesian Wikipedia traces a chain from the Naval Aviation Bureau through a Naval Aviation Command (Konerbal), a naval staff section, a special staff and the Naval Aviation Service (Disnerbal) to 13 June 2006, when all naval aviation was brought under the Naval Aviation Center, Puspenerbal, with its headquarters at Juanda.

Wikipedia lists five squadrons of Wing Udara 2 at Juanda: Squadron 100 with AS565 MBe Panther anti-submarine helicopters, Squadron 200 with Bonanza G36, TB-9 Tampico and EC120B Colibri trainers, Squadron 600 with C-212-200 Aviocars for rapid logistics, Squadron 700 with ScanEagle drones and Squadron 800 with CN-235-220 maritime patrol aircraft. A Naval Aviation Museum displays full-size aircraft.

Its aircraft work far from Surabaya. In April 2026 Squadron 800’s CN235 P-8301 flew patrols from Ambon for Operation Tameng Papua, Antara reported, and Panthers have served aboard Indonesian corvettes off Lebanon with the UN. The cost of training shows too: on 7 September 2022 Bonanza T-2503 took off from Juanda at 08:45 for a fleet exercise and crashed into the Madura Strait off Bangkalan about 45 minutes later.