32nd Air Base () is a

Polish Air Force The Polish Air Force () is the aerial warfare Military branch, branch of the Polish Armed Forces. Until July 2004 it was officially known as ''Wojska Lotnicze i Obrony Powietrznej'' (). In 2014 it consisted of roughly 26,000 military personnel an ...

base, located in

Łask Łask () is a town in central Poland with 16,925 inhabitants (2020). It is the capital of Łask County, and is situated in Łódź Voivodeship. It is located in the Sieradz Land. A town with some 1,000 years of history, Łask is a former residenti ...

, about 30 km south-west of

Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...

. It is one of the two bases where

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

F-16 The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is an American single-engine supersonic multirole fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force (USAF). Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it e ...

fighters are stationed, the other being 31st Air Base. 9 of them were first moved there in October 2008. The goal is to have 16 fighters, operated by the 10th Tactical Squadron. A detachment of the

US Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

has been permanently based at Łask since November, 2012. Additional units rotate to the base periodically to conduct training exercises. The force is thought to be nuclear-capable and has joined nuclear exercises with

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

. The base airfield was built in 1957.Łask local government site
/ref> The current base unit, combining infrastructure and ground personnel, was formed in 2001. In the past there were plans to use this airfield for civilian airliners, but with the expansion of nearby

Łódź Władysław Reymont Airport Lodz Airport Central Poland , formerly known as ''Łódź-Lublinek Airport'', is a regional airport in central Poland, located approximately southwest of Łódź city center. Łódź ranked 8th among Polish airports in 2013 in passenger numbers ...

these have been shelved.

References

External links

32 Baza Lotnictwa Taktycznego
Official site in Polish Polish Air Force bases {{PolishAirForce-stub