CRUZEX Base Aerea de Natal Brazil

What an event! From the UK you can go to Natal, where the Air Base hosting CRUZEX is, via Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo – or both! or you can fly direct to Natal from Lisbon, spoiled for choice. The air arms of many Latin American nations were present. Those from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru sent aircraft, as did Portugal and the United States. In total 16 nations attended bringing over of 50 aircraft, plus many more additional support aircraft. The Brazilian Air Force attended this event with many of their Natal based aircraft and a large amount of Fighters, Transports and ECM “Electronic Counter Measures” aircraft from other bases around Brazil. In total nearly 80 aircraft from the host nation were on view.

CRUZEX has been running since 2002 and has become multinational air combat training exercise hosted by the Brazilian Air Force, where the air arms of participating nations can learn to work and train together. The wide variety of aircraft types present give an indication of the breadth of this training exercise. There are fast jet operations, Close Air to Ground “CAG” work, Combat Search and Rescue “CSAR”, Airborne Early Warning “AEW”, inflight refuelling and transport. Natal is ideally situated. The air exercise area is around 200 miles in radius, well away from the town in the hinterland where the airspace is clear to permit high level to ground level operations. I cannot say too much about the detail, for example, the nature of the simulated threats, how they are dealt with or how performance is assessed, by review or in real time, because journalists were only permitted one question which did rather limit the detail of a reply. But it became clear that there is widespread assessment and review of the aerial activity which brought into play, for the first time, the space threat that will be a feature in years to come. A representative of each of the participating countries attended the briefing and that was helpful, with most of the information, inevitably, being provided by the Brazilian Air Force. A thank you to all for attending.

The Air Force is in my view and, I think, that of all the others who attended as media or as “Spotters” to be commended. They did a first class, a brilliant, job from registration of interest in attending to getting people in each day, passes issued, providing some great locations for photos and for adjusting those locations to take account of the sun for the afternoon missions. A really great job and after the growing heat, to transport everyone back to the shade of the buildings where a range of good quality hot and cold food and drink was available to purchase at local prices. That would set us up nicely for the afternoon sessions. Truly, no more could have been done and a big “thank you” to all who helped to organise all the facilities to enable media and “Spotters” to attend this very special event.

Let’s hope that this major South American exercise becomes a regular bi-annual event once again and becomes a date not to be missed in our aviation calendars. Aviation Reporting would like to thank the PAO & media team of the Brazilian Air Force and the Defence Attache in London, also Sandro Rota for his help when dealing with the Natal Air Base CRUZEX applications team.

Author & photography by Peter Nelson