The operator of the civil airport, Aerodromi Srbije, dates the military airfield to 1967: “Military airport Ladjevci near Kraljevo was built, and settled with the 235th Fighter-Bomber Squadron equipped with F-84 Thunderjet aircraft.” English Wikipedia adds that it was sometimes called Obrva airfield after the neighbouring village. It sits in the West Morava valley north-west of Kraljevo; the Serbian AIP gives an elevation of 694 ft and a single 2,265 by 30 m composite runway, designated 13/31 (Wikipedia gives 14/32).

Its importance grew as Yugoslavia broke apart. According to the airport history, “After dissolution of SFRY it took over squadrons from Skoplje and Mostar.” Tango Six’s 50-year history of the Orao says the 241st Fighter-Bomber Aviation Squadron came from the base at Petrovac, the airfield of Skopje in what is now North Macedonia. English Wikipedia names the other arrivals as the 353rd Reconnaissance Squadron and the 240th Fighter-Bomber Squadron from Mostar, now in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the arrival year of the 353rd rests on Wikipedia alone.

By 1999 Lađevci was the main base of the 98th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Regiment. Tango Six places the regiment’s 241st Squadron “Tigrovi” and the 353rd Reconnaissance Squadron “Sokolovi” (Hawks) at Lađevci, while its second Orao squadron, the 252nd, and the test centre’s aircraft flew to Ponikve when the NATO campaign began. The regiment itself traces its lineage to the 198th Assault Regiment, formed on 28 November 1949, which is still the brigade’s day.

The NATO air campaign began on the evening of 24 March 1999. At NATO’s briefing the next day General Wesley Clark said more than 40 targets had been struck, “most of these targets were associated with the integrated air defence system”, and declined to identify them. NATO’s stated aim was to degrade Yugoslav forces’ capacity to continue repression in Kosovo; Serbian official and state bodies describe the campaign as NATO aggression. The airport operator’s history uses that wording and says the airfield “suffered serious damage” and lost its control tower.

The most detailed account of the base in the war is a 2016 Tango Six article by Živojin Banković. It says the enemy “dejstvovao po aerodromu Lađevci” during the night of 24 to 25 March: Orao 25203 was hit and burned in its hardened shelter, 25206 was later hit in a shelter and 25152, left beside the workshop, was buried by earth. Surviving aircraft were camouflaged along the road towards Mrčajevci and later dismantled and hidden in buildings around Kraljevo. These serial numbers come from Serbian specialist press, not from an official loss list.

On 25 March the commander of the 241st Squadron, Života Đurić, was killed when his J-22, serial 25104 and armed with four FAB-250 bombs, crashed near Glogovac in Kosovo. Tango Six calls it the only loss of the fighter-bomber aviation in a combat attack and says the exact cause was never officially determined; English Wikipedia lists malfunction, pilot error and ground fire from the Kosovo Liberation Army as possibilities. Sources differ on his rank: Tango Six gives major in 2016 and 2024, but lieutenant colonel in 2019, as does Wikipedia.

Figures for the regiment’s war are modest and not fully consistent. Banković’s 2016 account gives the 98th Regiment 31 missions, including 25 combat sorties lasting 15.25 hours, of which 19 involved weapon release; the 241st Squadron from Lađevci flew 10 sorties with 10 attacks and the 252nd 8 sorties with 5 attacks, 3 of them spoiled by weather. He lists 32 FAB-250 bombs and 56 BL-755 cluster bombs dropped, and says combat flying stopped in the first days of April.

Tango Six’s 2024 history repeats 10 combat sorties for the 241st, adding that unofficial accounts give about 13 flights. English Wikipedia, for the whole Yugoslav Orao fleet, gives approximately 36 combat missions. The ranges therefore run from 25 to 36 sorties depending on what is counted and by whom; neither NATO nor the Serbian Ministry of Defence has published a sortie count for Lađevci that could settle it.

Wikipedia counts eleven Oraos destroyed on the ground during the campaign, mostly at Ponikve, where one hangar reportedly held six J-22s and two MiG-21s; that total is not broken down by base in any official source read for this page, so the Lađevci share is given only as the three airframes named by Banković.

The Serbian Armed Forces formed the 98th Air Brigade on 13 June 2007 from the 98th Fighter-Bomber Aviation Regiment, the 285th Air Base (Lađevci and Ponikve), the 119th Helicopter Regiment and the 161st Air Base at Niš. Its garrisons are the “Morava” military airfield at Lađevci and the Niš airfield, and its commander in 2026 is Brigadier General Aleksandar Milićević. Its mission, in the brigade’s words, is fire support for land and special forces, air transport and aerial reconnaissance.

The official unit page lists eight subordinate units, among them the 241st Fighter-Bomber Aviation Squadron, the 714th Anti-Armour Helicopter Squadron, the 353rd Reconnaissance Squadron and the 98th Artillery-Rocket Division, and an inventory of Orao and An-2TD aircraft, Mi-8, Mi-17, H145M, Mi-35M/P and Gazelle (Gama) helicopters, CH-92 and CH-95 drones, 40 mm Bofors L-70 guns and 9K38M 9K38 Igla (Šilo) missiles#352;ilo portable missiles. In late 2019 the military construction agency tendered a helicopter hangar at Lađevci of 81.5 by 35.5 m, about 2,893 square metres gross, sized for four Mi-35M helicopters.

Exercises in 2026 still revolved around the Orao. Tango Six reported in August 2026 that the brigade’s tactical training, flown from Morava, Niš and a temporary field at Trstenik, practised stand-off attacks from 6 to 8 km and the suppression of ground-based air defences, with Oraos, MiG-29s, G-4s, helicopters and Chinese drones taking part.

The Orao has been kept flying at Lađevci on a shrinking fleet. Tango Six’s count after November 2013 was 9 J-22s, 7 NJ-22s, 8 IJ-22s and 2 INJ-22s on the books, of which only 5 were operational in the Tigrovi squadron. Its 2024 history gives 6 J-22s and 7 NJ-22s operational in 2017–2023, and English Wikipedia gives 17 J-22 and NJ-22 aircraft. The site calculated that 29 Oraos had been lost by the air arms of Yugoslavia, Republika Srpska and Serbia since 1981.

A modernisation programme, unofficially called Orao 2.0, was shown in 2016 and a two-seat NJ-22 prototype carrying 128 mm rocket launchers was displayed to Defence Minister Miloš Vučević at Morava on 8 June 2023. Tango Six wrote in November 2024 that more than eight and a half years after the demonstrator, no modernised Orao had reached the operational squadron.

The future is uncertain. Serbia has ordered 12 Rafale fighters, and Tango Six notes that the Orao’s remaining life depends on airframe hours and on how far modernisation goes. Meanwhile the brigade is preserving its past: an F-86E Sabre that served with the 198th regiment from 1965 was under restoration at Lađevci in December 2023 for display outside the brigade’s memorial room.

Civil use of the military runway began on 5 October 2011, when, in the operator’s words, the “First civilian airplane from Belgrade landed, and it unofficially becomes an military civilian airport.” A new control tower, energy plant and a civil terminal at Tavnik, separate from the military unit, were started in spring 2011, and runway repairs lasted until 2016.

The project drew criticism for its pace. In July 2015 Tango Six’s Petar Vojinović called the ministry’s latest announcement part of a “festival of promises”, noting that Minister Zorana Mihajlović did not know which airline would fly or where. In June 2016 Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport pledged 300,000 euros for the runway, with more than 10 million euros said to have been invested by then. In February 2019 the government set aside about 8.6 million euros to extend the runway.

Morava Airport opened on 28 June 2019. The transport ministry tendered 5.7 million euros of public-service subsidy for flights to Vienna and Thessaloniki, and Air Serbia began Vienna flights on 17 December 2019 with ATR 72s. English Wikipedia records 529 passengers in 2019 and 14,713 in 2025, against government expectations of 100,000 by 2020, and cites estimates of total investment from 40 million euros to “hundreds of millions” from opposition figures.