'' at military exercises, 27 September 1910
Beginnings In 1818, during the reign of
John Caradja, the prince of
Wallachia, an unmanned hot air balloon was flown off
Dealul Spirii in
Bucharest. On , Marius Willemot, the owner of the hydrogen balloon named flew together with
Majors
Iacob Lahovary,
Constantin Poenaru and Dumitrescu over
Bucharest. The last flight took place on , Willemot flying together with Colonel
Nicolae Haralambie,
Ion Ghica and a third person. The balloon had made its first flight in
Paris on 27 March of the same year. The first aeronautical unit of Romania was established in 1893 under the 1st Telegraph Company in the 1st Engineer Regiment. The role of this unit was to operate the
observation balloons for aerial surveillance in support of the artillery units defending the
fortifications of Bucharest. In 1913, the unit was reorganized into the "
Aerostation Company" which became part of the Military Aeronautics Service. On 20 November 1909, the
Chitila Piloting School was formed as a
joint venture by Mihail Cerchez. The school, conducted by French flight instructors, had five hangars,
bleachers for spectators and workshops where the
Farman airplanes were built under license. It was opened on 9 July 1910, led by the chief flight instructor and director of the school René Guillemin who was soon replaced by Michel-Paul Molla after an accident. The first pilot licensed at Chitila was
Ștefan Protopopescu on 9 July 1911. The school closed in late 1912 due to financial difficulties, having trained six officers, but only licensed two. In November 1909, the Romanian Minister of War commissioned
Aurel Vlaicu to build the
A Vlaicu I airplane at the
Bucharest Army Arsenal which first flew on 17 June 1910. On 28 September during the fall
military exercise, Vlaicu flew his airplane from
Slatina to
Piatra Olt carrying a message, Romania thus becoming one of the first countries to use airplanes for military purposes. Along with other Romanian pilots, Vlaicu flew reconnaissance missions during the
Second Balkan War.
Vlaicu III, the first metal aircraft in the world, was completed after his death, in May 1914. On 1 April 1913, the first law on the organization of military aeronautics was issued, thus forming the Military Aeronautics Service (), later reorganized as the Romanian Air Corps () in 1915.
World War I On the eve of Romania's
entrance into the war in August 1916, only 24 out of the 44 aircraft that had been imported and assembled at
Rezerva generală a aviației (RGA) were available. Another 20 aircraft were provided by the flight schools. These aircraft included
Bristol T.B.8s,
Bristol Coanda Monoplanes,
Blériot XIs, and other
Farman aircraft. One of the Vlaicu monoplanes,
A Vlaicu II, crashed in 1913, while the
A Vlaicu I was retired in 1914, leaving
A Vlaicu III as the sole Romanian-made aircraft in the
Romanian Air Corps. Also in 1916, the Anti-aircraft Defence Corps was formed and equipped with
searchlights and locally converted
anti-aircraft guns, which included the "Negrei" and "
Burileanu" systems. On 1 January 1924, the Army-subordinated Air Corps was reorganized as a separate
military branch. It was named (ARR, ) and placed under the command of the General Inspectorate of Aeronautics. The number of
aviators and aircraft built either under license or locally designed also continued to grow. This led to the formation of the aviation flotillas (
air wings) in 1929 from the previous
aviation groups. By 1936, the Air Force's aircraft were largely obsolete and the mounting political and military tensions in Europe led to calls for a restructuring plan of the ARR. The drafted plan proposed equipping 36 new squadrons with modern combat aircraft within two years. Due to continued delays, delegations for acquiring new aircraft were only sent in April 1939. The aircraft inventory quickly grew in size with deliveries from Germany and the United Kingdom. Also in 1939, a large number of Polish aircraft arrived following the
invasion of Poland and were brought into Romanian service.
World War II fighters on patrol during
World War II When Romania, allied with
Nazi Germany, went to war against the
Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the ARR had 621 airplanes, including its locally made
IAR 80 fighters. Continuing the campaign against the
Axis, the Royal Romanian Air Force, organized in the
1st Air Corps, aided the
Soviet and
Romanian armies until 18 May 1945. The last victory scored by a Romanian pilot, although not officially registered, happened on 4 May when a Soviet
Yak-3 was shot down in a clash with two Romanian
Bf 109s. In the 1944-1945 campaign, the Air Force destroyed 126 enemy aircraft in battle while losing 176 aircraft itself, of which 30 in combat and the rest mainly in accidents. Starting in 1974, Romanian-made aircraft supplemented the already existing jets. The Romanian
IAR-93 attack aircraft flew its first flight on 31 October 1974. It represented a great step forward taking into account that it was the only jet fighter not made by the Soviets, the only one ever manufactured and operated by a
Warsaw Pact country. In February 1956, the first helicopter squadron was established, followed by the reception of the first helicopter, a Soviet
Mi-4, a few months later. In 1961, the squadron received other Mi-4s, while
PZL SM-1 and
SM-2 helicopters equipped another squadron. From 1968,
Mi-8 helicopters also entered service. In 1971, the first Romanian-manufactured helicopters entered service – the
SA 316 Alouette III produced under license by IAR as the
IAR 316. Renewing the aircraft fleet process went on with the first
MiG-23s arriving on 23 January 1979. On 14 May 1981, at 20:16, the Soviet
spaceship Soyuz 40 was launched from
Baikonur to perform a common Romanian-Soviet flight, with
Lieutenant Dumitru Prunariu and
Colonel Leonid Popov as commander on board.
Post-1989 was withdrawn in 2003 In 1990, the last
MiG-15 fighters were retired from the 49th Aviation Regiment, located in Ianca. In 1992, production of the
IAR-93 was stopped following the start of the
Yugoslav Civil Wars. The last IAR-93s were retired in 1998. By 1 June 1995 the Air Force dropped the communist era regimental system in favor of a system consisting of Air Bases, Groups and Squadrons. Due to financial constraints, being unable to purchase new fighters, the Romanian Air Force decided to invest in the upgrade of the MiG-21 fighters. Following a competition between several companies, the
Israeli company
Elbit was chosen, and the MiG-21M and MF/MF-75 versions were selected. The program was originally called the "DD program" as a tribute to the fighter pilot and writer
Doru Davidovici, who died in a MiG-21 crash in 1989. The upgrade program was later renamed to "Lancer", designated as "LanceR" with capital "R" in Romania. The Romanian MiG-29 fleet was also intended to undergo modernization under a project named "
Sniper" done by
DASA,
Aerostar and Elbit. The first flight took place on 5 May 2000 and the prototype was presented at
ILA 2000. However, the modernization project was canceled due to various reasons and the MiG-29s were retired. Following its entry into the
Partnership for Peace program in 1994, Romania started cooperating with other countries with the goal of eventually joining NATO. For this, Romanian Air Force aircraft participated in many local or abroad exercises and airshows. Before joining NATO, the 86th Group at
Borcea started to convert into a NATO compatible unit by making improvements to the base's infrastructure, allowing its pilots to fly a fair amount of training hours and work according to NATO procedures. Along with the retiring of airplanes, several bases were disbanded as well, including the
Alexeni Airfield, the 49th Air Base from Ianca and the
91st Air Base from
Deveselu. The
93rd Air Base from
Timișoara was also disbanded and currently serves as an annex to the 71st Air Base. The deal included
Mistral MANPADS and
MICA VL surface-to-air missiles. However, after preliminary talks with
MBDA in August, the deal was put on hold and canceled afterwards because of the defense cuts. In February 2010, CSAT signed an agreement with the United States for missile defence under whose terms land-based
SM-3 systems would be installed in Romania. On 3 May 2011, the president of Romania
Traian Băsescu announced the location for the SM-3 systems: former Air Force base Deveselu in the
Olt County. The system includes 3 batteries with 24 SM-3 Block I rockets, manned by approximately 200 US soldiers (with a maximum of 500) initially under Romanian Air Force overall command. On 23 May 2022, the MiG-21 LanceRs resumed flights after being suspended on 15 April 2022. The LanceR continued to fly for a period of one year, until 15 May 2023 when they were retired.
Russian invasion of Ukraine On the starting day of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, two F-16s from the
53rd Fighter Squadron were sent to intercept a
Sukhoi Su-27 of the
Ukrainian Air Force that was approaching Romanian airspace. The Su-27 was escorted to the
95th Air Base where the pilot was taken by Romanian authorities. The
Ukrainian Minister of Defence,
Oleksiy Reznikov, quickly apologized for this event and requested the return of the airplane and its pilot. After a maintenance team from Ukraine fixed the technical issues of the fighter, the aircraft was returned without its weapons on 1 March, being escorted by two
MiG-21 LanceRs to the border where other Ukrainian airplanes took over. On 2 March 2022, a MiG-21 LanceR was lost while on an air patrol inside Romanian airspace near
Cogealac, 60 miles from the Ukrainian border. This "occurred amid increased air police missions in Romania after the Russian invasion of Ukraine." An IAR 330 on a search and rescue mission for the missing MiG-21 crashed with seven fatalities. The eight servicemen who died in the two accidents were posthumously promoted and decorated by the
president of Romania. Shortly after,
fake news claiming that the Romanian MiG was shot down by Ukrainian
S-300 missile systems appeared. These claims were officially refuted. The preliminary analysis published on 23 March showed that the crashes occurred due to human and environmental factors. As of 13 December 2022, Romanian Air Force and allied aircraft took part in more than 150
air policing missions since the start of Russia's invasion. The majority of the missions involved Russian aircraft approaching Romanian airspace. Other missions involved coordinating civilian aircraft which had reported bomb threats or after their communications were interrupted. ==International deployments==