The Military History Institute’s archive traces military use of Kuchyňa to 1918 and records reports from 1922 of an aviation shooting range and camp near Malacky. The airfield took its name, Nový Dvor, from a former estate. The range was about 12 km long and 7 km wide, stretching east from Malacky towards Rohožník, with its southern part running towards the village of Kuchyňa. The airfield bordered it directly, which is still the logic of the place today: aircraft take off and are over the target area within minutes.

The range worked seasonally, outside the winter. Czechoslovak flying squadrons rotated through once or twice a year to practise bombing ground targets and firing at fixed and moving targets, and the Škoda works at Plzeň tested aircraft cannon there. The archive states that the range functioned as an independent installation from 1923, when the airfield was established, and that before 1939 it belonged to the IV Squadron of the 3rd Air Regiment of General M. R. Štefánik, for which it served as a field airfield.

A 1937 opening date is sometimes given for the airfield, but the Military History Institute’s inventory, the stronger source, places both airfield and range in the early 1920s. The page therefore treats the base as dating from about 1922–1923 and flags the 1937 figure as unconfirmed. The land around the range is still military: the Záhorie military district is managed by the ministry’s forestry company, which in summer 2026 flew drone fire patrols over it.

When the Slovak State was declared on 14 March 1939, the Luftwaffe occupied the airfield the same month. The archive records what the Germans took: 79,797 litres of aviation fuel and 18 aircraft of the types Š-328, Š-616, Š-16, A-230 and A-330. The occupation was later given legal form. A lease between the Slovak defence ministry and the German armed forces was signed on 21 January 1941, backdated to take effect from 21 April 1939.

For most of the war the airfield served the Luftwaffe rather than the Slovak air arm. That changed the balance in western Slovakia in September 1944, during the Slovak National Uprising. English Wikipedia, citing the historian Martin Lacko, says the US Fifteenth Air Force raided the airfield on 20 September 1944 and destroyed or damaged 41 of the 46 German aircraft present.

Together with insurgent action against the airfield at Piešťany, the raid is credited in the same account with shifting air superiority over Slovak territory at a critical moment for the uprising. The figures come from a single secondary source and are given here as that source states them; no USAAF mission record was consulted for this page. No figure for German or Slovak personnel losses on the airfield was found in the sources read, so none is given.

After the war the range was rebuilt as Military Unit 4562 Kuchyňa, set up in 1947 as the Malacky air range. The number stayed the same until 31 October 1992, although the unit’s name and role changed several times. The archive calls it an atypical structure with no parallel in Czechoslovak aviation. From 1950 it answered to the 3rd Air Technical Division, and its main job was to organise the combat training of Czechoslovak flying units that came to use the range.

On 1 September 1963 the range, an aircraft reserve depot and the 15th Ground Support Squadron were merged into a new Training Command Aviation Kuchyňa under the 7th Army. English Wikipedia adds that, because the base was so close to the Austrian border, it was used for flight training and range work rather than for front-line combat squadrons. That reading fits the archive, which describes no permanently based fighter regiment in these years.

The Military History Archive in Bratislava holds the unit’s papers for 1946–1963 in ten boxes. For the decades after 1963 no official unit history was found for this page, so the aircraft types that trained here during the later Cold War are not listed. Locally, the base has been a presence more than an employer: in 2015 the mayor of Kuchyňa, Róbert Bujňa, told TASR that few villagers worked there and that it brought the village practically no economic benefit.

When Czechoslovakia split, the new Slovak Air Force received 12 Su-25K ground-attack jets and one two-seat Su-25UBK, based at the 33rd Air Base Malacky-Kuchyňa, according to English Wikipedia citing Gordon and Dawes. Slovakia withdrew its Su-22, Su-25 and MiG-21 fleets in the early 2000s, and ten Su-25Ks and the Su-25UBK were sold to Armenia in 2004. Slovakia also inherited 18 Su-22M4s and three Su-22UM3Ks, sold to Angola in 1999 and 2001 or kept for museums; where those were based is not confirmed here.

The range also became a bridge to NATO. On 9 February 1999 General John P. Jumper, commander of US Air Forces in Europe, and the Slovak state secretary Jozef Pivarci signed a memorandum giving US fighter pilots access to the Kuchyňa range and Malacky Air Base. GlobalSecurity.org reports that Slovakia allowed low flying down to 500 feet, compared with 1,000 feet in Germany.

About 200 airmen and ten F-16s of the 23rd Fighter Squadron from Spangdahlem came on 1 April 2000, and in September 2000 some 250 people and 13 F-16s of the 31st Fighter Wing from Aviano flew Operation Iron Claw from here. Kuchyňa later became home to the transport wing named after General M. R. Štefánik, which flew the An-26 until the last one left for the museum at Piešťany on 4 February 2016.

Retiring the last An-26 left Slovakia without a medium transport for almost two years. The replacement, the Leonardo C-27J Spartan, was selected by tender from 2008 and ordered in 2014. The first was handed over at Kuchyňa on 31 October 2017, later than contracted. The second arrived on schedule on 9 April 2018, and the defence minister Peter Gajdoš said no contractual penalties would apply for it. The package cost EUR 98 million excluding VAT.

Official figures for the unit price differ. In 2016 the ministry was reported as putting each aircraft at EUR 34.5 million; in 2018 the figure was EUR 35.8 million each, excluding VAT. The difference may reflect how costs were split, and both figures are quoted. Today the 46th Wing lists a transport squadron with two C-27Js and six L-410s, according to English Wikipedia. The wing also has flight-operations, air traffic control and maintenance units and an aerial training range.

The base has been steadily rebuilt around this fleet. Apron APN 4 was widened by 20 metres for the Spartans and Turbolets at a cost of EUR 5,042,118.66 including VAT. In 2022 Kuchyňa became the first Slovak military airfield to get new primary, secondary and precision-approach radars, costing EUR 6.4 million. They came under a framework agreement worth more than EUR 23 million for three sites.

The plan to base fighters here is older than the F-16. In May 2020 the defence minister Jaroslav Naď said Kuchyňa needed about EUR 5 million of work to take the MiG-29s from Sliač during that base’s reconstruction. The MiG-29s were retired in August 2022 before any move happened, so the new F-16 Block 70s came instead. The first two landed on the evening of 22 July 2024, flown from the United States by American pilots.

President Peter Pellegrini and the defence minister Robert Kaliňák attended the welcome ceremony. The minister said the spaces for the jets, technicians and crews had been built in eight weeks. The jets arrived in batches: three were in Slovakia by April 2025, seven of 14 on 2 October 2025 and ten on 30 December 2025. Lockheed Martin had promised all 14 by the end of 2025 and finished production that December. The last four are to follow after Slovak personnel finish training in the United States.

The ministry said in December 2025 that the fighters should move to Sliač in 2027, once its reconstruction is finished. On 9 September 2026 the government approved four more two-seat F-16 Block 70s, estimated at EUR 390 million, and the opposition questioned the cost. The arrival itself also became a political row. The opposition SaS party called the ceremony hypocritical, recalling that Smer-SD and Hlas had campaigned against the 2022 US defence agreement that covers this base.