Colombia has revealed that the flight availability of its aircraft fleet Armed forces (FAC–ARC–EJC–PNC) is 40.76%, while the remaining 59.24% are non-operational.
These percentages have been revealed by the Colombian Minister of Defense, Ivan Velasquezin statements before the Commission II (National Defense and Armed Forces) of the House of Representatives of Congress of the nation. He also assured that the total number of fixed and rotary wing assets is 731 units.
Of that total, 298 are on the flight line (40.76%), another 223 (30.5%) are not operational because they are in some type of maintenance process and of the remaining 210 (28.7%) 23 are reported as a total loss. due to accidents, 33 more under evaluation to determine whether or not they can be recovered, 55 in the process of deregistration (removal of inventories) and 99 (13.5% of the total) waiting for the possibility of resources being assigned to them or not.
These last 99—by allocation of resources—correspond to an inventory that has been accumulating in recent years, which is why the national government has decided to focus investments on processes to recover and/or maintain the aircraft in existence, before allocating them to the acquisition of new media.
External effects
According to the minister, the current level of enlistment is a product not of the decrease in the budget, but of conditions of scheduled times that have coincided, due to external effects on the supply chain or due to the legal impossibility of advancing these processes (case Mi-17). All this has been happening since 2021.
This situation occurs at times of serious alterations to public order, particularly in the southwest of the country due to the criminal actions of organized armed drug trafficking and terrorist groups, but also in the midst of processes of renewal of the air capabilities of all the Forces. Armed forces—particularly the DAVAA and the Police Aviation—that have apparently been suspended, just after the models to be acquired were finally chosen.
Priority has been given to financing maintenance projects, some of which will be carried out on aircraft that must already be retired from service and replaced by new means that provide the necessary capabilities to confront terrorism, which are not available today.
