Dhamial began as a by-product of another war. Wikipedia says the field was built in 1941, during the Burma campaign, as a para training centre; RAF Chaklala nearby, now PAF Base Nur Khan, ran the parachute training flights of the period. When the war ended the Dhamial site was abandoned, in 1945.

For its first fifteen years Pakistan’s army aviation did not need an airfield of its own. No. 1 Air Observation Post Flight, formed on 15 August 1947 from Pakistan’s share of the RAF’s No. 659 Squadron, was part of the air force at first; GlobalSecurity says the army’s aviators became autonomous only in 1958, after training in the United States. On 15 October 1962 the army reopened the old para field as Dhamial Army Air Base. Wikipedia calls it the first air base of Pakistan Army Aviation and says it replaced Chaklala for the army’s operations. It was redesignated Army Aviation Air Base on 3 October 1964.

The helicopter age at Dhamial began on 27 June 1964, when 18 Bell OH-13 Sioux arrived in crates. An American team assembled them in September, and Wikipedia’s corps article dates the first flight to 24 September 1964, a year before the war in which, according to GlobalSecurity, the helicopters flew spotting, liaison and forward air control. Wikipedia describes Dhamial as the first air base in Pakistan where the army’s first helicopters were kept and flown.

The base was also the army’s workshop. GlobalSecurity says the army’s 503 Workshop at Dhamial assembled its Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs, of which the corps had about 60. By 1979, Wikipedia records, Dhamial was flying Alouette IIIs, Bell 47Gs, Bird Dogs, Mi-8s and Saab Supporters — the licence-built trainer known in Pakistan as the Mushshak. It was a mixed, mostly second-hand fleet, much of it gifted, that the army had assembled in less than two decades.

On 12 December 1972, a year after the war that ended with the surrender in Dhaka, Dhamial was renamed Qasim Army Aviation Base to honour Major Muhammad Qasim for his sacrifice in the 1971 war. The sources reached for this page do not describe what he did; in that war, according to GlobalSecurity, the army’s Mi-8s and Alouettes flew in East Pakistan and were withdrawn through Burma at the surrender.

Qasim is now the corps’ headquarters and its main overhaul centre, handling the Mi-17, Bell 412 and AH-1F Cobra. It is also where the army receives aircraft: GlobalSecurity places the 2007 handover of 26 Bell 412s and refurbished Cobras, funded by the United States, at Qasim Airbase. The city has grown around it. Wikipedia notes that the base, once outside Rawalpindi, is now surrounded by major residential colonies, among them Askari. Which flying squadrons are based here today the army does not publish, and this page does not guess.

The helicopters that pass through Qasim’s workshops are the backbone of the corps. The AH-1F Cobra arrived in two batches of ten, on 9 January 1985 and in October 1986, and was reinforced by 16 ex-Jordanian aircraft in 2010; Wikipedia’s figures for the fleet range from about 35 in 2013 to 55 today. The Mi-17, of which Wikipedia lists 60, has carried the army through the earthquake of 2005 and the long war in the north-west, and the United States handed over four more for counter-terrorism in June 2009. The Bell 412, 52 in Wikipedia’s count, began arriving with US funding: GlobalSecurity records 26 handed over in 2007.

All three are ageing or politically exposed. The Cobra’s intended successor, the AH-1Z, has been stored in Arizona since 2019 with the order on hold, and the corps began receiving Chinese Z-10MEs in 2025. How the overhaul work at Qasim will change as Chinese helicopters arrive has not been published.