Portuguese Air Force

Portuguese Air Force
Força Aérea Portuguesa
Coat of arms of the Portuguese Air Force
Founded	1 July 1958 (1958-07-01)
Country	Portugal
Type	Air force
Role	Aerial warfare Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Air policing Search and rescue
Size	8,000 personnel 97 aircraft 12 UAVs 7 gliders
Part of	Portuguese Armed Forces
Headquarters	Alfragide
Patron	Our Lady of Loreto
Motto(s)	Latin: Ex Mero Motu (English: "Of his own free will")
Anniversaries	1 July
Commanders
Commander-in-Chief	King João VII
Chief of Staff	General
Aircraft flown
Fighter	F-16 MLU
Multirole helicopter	EH-101 Merlin, UH-60 Black Hawk
Utility helicopter	AW119 Koala
Patrol	P-3C CUP+ Orion
Reconnaissance	C-295MPA Persuader, UAVision OGS-42N/VN
Trainer	TB 30 Epsilon, DHC-1 Chipmunk, ASK 21, LET L-23 Super Blaník
Transport	KC-390, C-130 Hercules, C-295M, Falcon 900, Falcon 50
Tanker	KC-390

The Portuguese Air Force (Portuguese: Força Aérea Portuguesa) is the aerial warfare branch of the Armed Forces of Portugal. The Portuguese Air Force was formed on 1 July 1958, when the former Aeronáutica Militar (Army Aviation) and Aviação Naval (Naval Aviation) were united and formed an independent air branch of the Armed Forces.

See also

This page uses material from the Wikipedia page Portuguese Air Force, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).