Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · A UAE Air Force base south of Dubai, Australia's main logistics hub in the Middle East and home to Britain's Donnelly Lines.
A real-world airfield as described in public sources, and how sim maps represent it. Units, facilities and names change; each is dated where the sources allow, and the charts are not for navigation. Use current official publications for flight planning.
Location and identity
- Location
- South of Dubai, United Arab Emirates [1]
- Country or territory
- United Arab Emirates
- Coordinates
- 25.0268° N, 55.3662° E [2]
- Elevation
- 165 ft (50 m) [2]
- Identifiers
- ICAO OMDM · IATA NHD
- Other names
- Minhad Air Base [1]
- Opened
- no opening date is given in the sources consulted
- Theatre
- Middle East
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Military
- Roles today
- Airlift and tanker · Forward staging and deployments · Command headquarters
- Operators
- United Arab Emirates Air Force · United Arab Emirates, air force · as of Oct 2026 [1]
- Australian Defence Force, Camp Baird, its main transport and logistics hub in the Middle East and the headquarters of Joint Task Force 633 · Australia, joint or defence-wide · since 2008; as of Oct 2026 [1]
- UK Armed Forces, Donnelly Lines, a permanent support facility opened in March 2024 · United Kingdom, joint or defence-wide · as of Mar 2024 [1]
Units
Permanently based units belong to the airfield; rotational and temporarily deployed units are there for a period or an operation. Dates are when the sources place each unit there; "as of" is when a source described it as current.
Current
Joint Task Force 633 headquarters [1]
- Service
- Australia, joint or defence-wide
- Basing
- Permanently based
- When
- as of Oct 2026
RAAF detachments for operations against the Islamic State [1]
- Service
- Australia, air force
- Basing
- Temporarily deployed
- Aircraft
- F/A-18A, F/A-18F, E-7A Wedgetail, KC-30A
- When
- date not given
RAAF maritime patrol detachment [1]
- Service
- Australia, air force
- Basing
- Temporarily deployed
- Aircraft
- AP-3C Orion
- When
- since 2003
No. 906 Expeditionary Air Wing RAF [1]
- Service
- United Kingdom, air force
- Basing
- Not stated in the sources
- When
- since Jan 2013
Runways and facilities
The sources do not date these figures. Facilities not listed here are not documented in the sources cited, which does not mean the airfield lacks them.
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
- None documented in the sources cited
- Other
- A parallel taxiway [1]
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Al Minhad Air Base (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway
- Apron
- Hangar or terminal
- Helipad
- Airfield boundary
Runways, taxiways, aprons and buildings inside the airfield boundary, true north up, drawn from OpenStreetMap data retrieved 2026-10-28. Widths come from the map data or, where it gives none, a typical 45 m runway and 18 m taxiway. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL 1.0. Community-mapped, not an official aerodrome chart, and not for navigation.
Sim maps
Represented in: DCS: Persian Gulf
DCS: Persian Gulf DCS World · Present day
Represented as “Al Minhad AFB” · checked 2026-10-28 [3]
Only the maps marked represented or confirmed absent have been checked. Any other map may or may not represent this airfield.
Other maps in Middle East, not yet checked for this airfield, which may lie outside them: DCS: Syria, DCS: Sinai, DCS: Iraq, DCS: Iraq North, Falcon BMS: Israel.
Role today
Al Minhad is a United Arab Emirates Air Force base south of Dubai and a logistics hub for the UAE’s allies. [1] The Australian Defence Force runs Camp Baird there, its main transport and logistics hub in the Middle East and the headquarters of Joint Task Force 633. [1] In March 2024 the Princess Royal opened Donnelly Lines, a permanent British facility with a headquarters and accommodation. [1]
The UAE asks foreign militaries not to advertise the host nation or the location of their operations there, because of local sensitivities about foreign forces in the country. [1]
History
Several allied countries are believed to have used the base since the early 2000s to supply operations in Afghanistan; a 2010 US diplomatic cable called it “a critical hub for Coalition/ISAF partners in Afghanistan”. [1] The RAAF flew AP-3C Orions from it from 2003, and Australia made it its main logistics hub in the region after its combat forces left Iraq in 2008. [1] Against the Islamic State it deployed F/A-18A Hornets, replaced in early 2015 by F/A-18F Super Hornets, with E-7A Wedgetails and KC-30As. [1] The Netherlands and New Zealand also deployed forces there. [1]
The RAF stood up No. 906 Expeditionary Air Wing there in January 2013. [1] In Operation Pitting, the evacuation of Kabul in 2021, RAF C-17s and C-130Js shuttled between Kabul and Minhad, and Voyagers flew evacuees on to RAF Brize Norton. [1]
The airfield
One runway, 09/27, 3,932 m long and surfaced in asphalt and concrete, with a parallel taxiway. [1]
Sources
- Al Minhad Air Base. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Minhad_Air_Base (accessed 2026-10-28). The base, the Australian and British facilities, and coalition use.
- Airport and runway data, OMDM. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Rows for OMDM in airports.csv and runways.csv: position, elevation and runway 09/27.
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Persian Gulf airbases (Al Minhad AFB.json). dcs-world-schema, open-source data extracted by running DCS World 2.9.30.28536. https://github.com/YoloWingPixie/dcs-world-schema/blob/c3091e6c08fb8167e26145d0e33c10e4140c6fe7/dcs-world-reference/latest/airbases/PersianGulf/Al%20Minhad%20AFB.json (accessed 2026-10-28). With its beacon and navaid files, as tabled on the DCS: Persian Gulf map page.
Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. FAA airport data and diagrams are official but are reissued every 28 or 56 days; each is cited with the edition read. pydcs mirrors the DCS terrain data at the commit linked.