Long before it was an air base, Palanquero was a cattle estate beside the Magdalena river, Colombia’s old highway to the Caribbean. According to English Wikipedia, the Hacienda Palanquero served the Colombian-German airline SCADTA as an airfield from 1919, the year Law 126 created Colombian military aviation. Floatplanes and then landplanes stopped here on the route that linked Barranquilla with the interior.

The war with Peru turned the site into a military base. Peruvian civilians and troops seized Leticia on the Amazon on 1 September 1932, and Colombia, which had a handful of aircraft and no bases near the border, bought aircraft abroad in a hurry. Wikipedia says the government chose Palanquero in 1932 as a centrally located military base; President Enrique Olaya Herrera inaugurated it on 27 August 1933 as the national airport for La Dorada. When the conflict ended, the Amazon bases were dismantled and their men sent to new bases such as Tres Esquinas, Palanquero and San José del Guaviare, according to English Wikipedia’s history of the service.

Palanquero became the jet base in the 1950s. Spanish Wikipedia records A-26C Invader bombers assigned from 1955 and Canadair Sabre Mk 4 fighters from 1956. Colombia went supersonic in 1972 with eighteen Mirage 5s, and the type was still flying from Palanquero in 2009: on 15 May that year Mirage 5 FAC 3031 failed to get airborne here, and its pilot ejected.

The Israeli Kfir followed. Colombia bought twelve ex-Israeli Kfir C2s and one TC2 in 1989–1990 and upgraded them to C7 standard; in February 2008 it signed for 24 more ex-Israeli airframes, and the fleet flies today as the Kfir C10/C12, the designation Infodefensa uses. English Wikipedia counted 23 Kfirs in service in 2019. They are flown by Escuadrón de Combate 111 ‘Dardos’, Colombia’s only fighter squadron, and have been used widely in ground attack against the guerrillas. The Kfir’s end was announced by President Gustavo Petro in April 2025, and the first was retired as a gate guardian in May 2025, yet Infodefensa reported Kfir C10/C12s flying armed patrols over the north of the country on President Abelardo de la Espriella’s orders in September 2026.

On 30 October 2009 Colombia and the United States signed a supplementary agreement on defence and security cooperation. Colombia’s Constitutional Court lists the installations it opened to US personnel: the air bases Germán Olano Moreno at Palanquero, Alberto Pauwels Rodríguez at Malambo and Luis Fernando Gómez Niño at Apiay, the army forts of Tolemaida and Larandia, and the naval bases at Cartagena and Bahía Málaga. A US Congressional Research Service report of 2012 notes that the deal, which let US troops use seven military facilities, “further inflamed” Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez.

The agreement did not survive Colombian constitutional review in that form. In Auto 288 of 17 August 2010 (cases D-7964 and D-7965, reporting justice Jorge Iván Palacio Palacio), the Constitutional Court held that the text created new obligations for Colombia beyond the cooperation agreements of 1952, 1962 and 1974, that it was therefore a treaty, and that it could produce no effects until it had gone through Congress and the Court’s automatic review. What US forces did at Palanquero under earlier agreements is outside the scope of the court’s ruling and is not described here.

Colombia signed for 17 Saab Gripens in mid-November 2025; Infodefensa reported the signing ceremony for 14 November, the air force’s anniversary. Saab announced the contract on 15 November 2025 as EUR 3.1 billion for 15 single-seat Gripen E and two two-seat Gripen F, delivered from 2026 to 2032; Infodefensa reported the price as US$4.402 billion and described all 17 as model E. Saab’s figures are used here.

Palanquero will be their home. According to Infodefensa, the air force signed a US$91 million contract with Consorcio ASA on 31 December 2025 for a two-level main hangar of 7,800 m² with eight parking and two repair positions, eight bunker-type shelters, a reaction bunker with four aircraft positions and crew stations, a Gripen electronic-warfare laboratory, a 1,650 m² tactical training centre with four simulators, and 35,410 m² of new apron. The work is due by 30 November 2028.