Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · The air base Russia built beside Latakia airport in 2015 to run its Syrian intervention, the target of the first drone-swarm attack.
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-east of Latakia and about 2 miles north-east of Jableh, Latakia Governorate, on the Syrian coast [1]
- Country or territory
- Syria
- Coordinates
- 35.4011° N, 35.9487° E [3]
- Identifiers
- ICAO OSLK · IATA LTK
- Other names
- Opened
- as Latakia's civil airport, whose passenger terminal opened in 1983; the Russian air base beside it became operational on 30 September 2015 [1] [2]
- Theatre
- Middle East
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Joint military and civil
- Roles today
- Fighter and strike · Forward staging and deployments
- Operators
- Russian Aerospace Forces, under an August 2015 treaty giving Russia use of the airfield free of charge and with no time limit · Russia, air force · since Sep 2015; as of Aug 2026 [1]
- General Authority of Civil Aviation, the civil airport, closed to civil traffic as of March 2026 · Syria, civil · as of Mar 2026 [2]
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
Russian air group for the intervention in Syria [1]
- Service
- Russia, air force
- Basing
- Temporarily deployed
- Aircraft
- Su-24M, Su-25, Su-34, Su-35, Il-20M, Mi-24, Mi-28, Ka-52, Mi-8
- When
- since Sep 2015
Russian Naval Infantry, about 600 guarding the base [2]
- Service
- Russia, marines
- Basing
- Temporarily deployed
- When
- as of Oct 2015
Part of the Admiral Kuznetsov's air wing, after the carrier lost a MiG-29K to an arresting-wire failure [1]
- Service
- Russia, navy
- Basing
- Temporarily deployed
- Aircraft
- MiG-29K, Su-33
- When
- since Nov 2016
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.
| Runway | Length | Width | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17R/35L [1]2,797 m | 9,177 ft (2,797 m) | Not given | asphalt |
| 17L/35R [1] [3]2,797 m as published; source 3 lists one runway, 17/35, of 9,175 ft | 9,177 ft (2,797 m) | Not given | asphalt |
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
- None documented in the sources cited
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Khmeimim Air Base (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway, with its name
- 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: Syria
DCS: Syria DCS World · Present day
Represented as “Bassel Al-Assad” · checked 2026-10-28 [4]
- Runways 17L/35R and 17R/35L [4]
- Tower 118.1 MHz VHF and 250.6 MHz UHF [4]
- VOR-DME LTK on 114.8 MHz, an NDB (LTK), RSBN channel 7, an ILS on runway 17R, 109.1 MHz (IBA), and PRMG channel 9 on runway 35R [4]
Differences from the real airfield
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: Persian Gulf, DCS: Sinai, DCS: Iraq, DCS: Iraq North, Falcon BMS: Israel.
Role today
Khmeimim is the air base Russia built beside Latakia’s civil airport in 2015 to run its intervention in the Syrian civil war, and it shares the airport’s airfield. [1] A treaty signed in DamascusDamascus International Airport AirfieldSyria's busiest airport, struck repeatedly by Israel in 2022–2023 and reopened to the world in January 2025. on 26 August 2015 gives Russia its use free of charge and with no time limit; the Syrian military guards the perimeter while Russia handles air defenceAir defense GlossaryJoint terms: Defensive measures designed to destroy attacking enemy aircraft or missiles in the atmosphere, or to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of such attack.. [1] At the end of 2017 Russia made it part of a permanent military grouping in Syria, with its naval facility at Tartus. [1]
When the Assad government fell in December 2024, transports arrived and Russia moved its S-400 and TorSA-15 Gauntlet Threat systemA tracked, self-contained vehicle with its own Scrum Half radars and eight vertically launched command-guided missiles. air defence systems to Tartus, but it kept the base; Bashar al-Assad stopped there on his way into exile. [1] On 9 August 2026 Syria’s foreign ministry said the Syrian civil administration would take back the airport and the base would become a joint training centre over three months, under an agreement between the two countries. [1] Talks in 2025 on reopening the civil airport stalled when Russia refused to hand it over, and it was still closed to civil traffic in March 2026. [2]
History
Latakia’s airport opened its terminal in 1983 and its tower by 1989, and until 2024 it was named after Bassel al-Assad. [2] In mid-2015 Russia built accommodation for about 1,000 people, a control tower, runway extensions, storage and fuelling points beside it; the US revealed the build-up in early September, and the base began operations on 30 September 2015. [1] Su-24Ms, Su-25sSu-25 Frogfoot AircraftAn armoured Soviet close air support jet; the Su-25T adds Vikhr anti-tank missiles. and Su-34s flew strikesStrike GlossaryJoint terms: An attack to damage or destroy an objective or a capability. from it, with Il-20M reconnaissanceReconnaissance GlossaryJoint terms: A mission undertaken to obtain, by visual observation or other detection methods, information about the activities and resources of an enemy or adversary, or to secure data concerning the meteorological, hydrographic, or… aircraft and Mi-24, Mi-28, Ka-52 and Mi-8Mi-8MTV-2 Hip AircraftThe armed transport version of the Mi-8, the most-produced helicopter in the world. helicopters. [1] After Turkey shot down a Su-24M on 24 November 2015, Russia installed an S-400 system covering the air from southern Turkey to northern Israel, and Su-35s arrived at the end of January 2016. [1] Some of the Admiral Kuznetsov’s MiG-29Ks and Su-33sSu-33 Flanker-D AircraftThe carrier-based Flanker: canards, folding wings and a ski-jump launch from Admiral Kuznetsov. flew from Khmeimim in November 2016 after the carrier lost a MiG-29K to an arresting-wire failure. [1]
The base was a target for most of the war. Shelling on 31 December 2017 killed two Russian servicemen and, by press accounts, damaged several aircraft. [1] On 6 January 2018 Russia repelled an attack by a swarm of 13 armed fixed-wing drones, said to be the first of its kind; air defences and electronic warfareEW GlossaryJoint terms: Electronic warfare. Military action involving the use of electromagnetic and directed energy to control the electromagnetic spectrum or to attack the enemy. at the base had stopped more than 100 drones by September 2019. [1] An An-26 crashed landing there on 6 March 2018, killing all 39 on board, and on 19 September 2018 Syrian air defences firing at Israeli F-16sF-16 Fighting Falcon AircraftA single-engine multirole fighter: fly-by-wire, 9 g, and the US Air Force's main strike and SEAD aircraft. shot down a Russian Il-20 coming in to land. [1]
The airfield
Two parallel asphalt runways, 17R/35L and 17L/35R, each published as 2,797 m long. [1]
Sources
- Khmeimim Air Base. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmeimim_Air_Base (accessed 2026-10-28). History, operations, incidents, drone attacks and the status after the fall of the Assad government.
- Latakia International Airport. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latakia_International_Airport (accessed 2026-10-28). The civil airport's history, name and closure, and its military use.
- Airport and runway data, OSLK. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Rows for OSLK in airports.csv and runways.csv: position, elevation and runway 17/35.
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Syria airbases (Bassel Al-Assad.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/Syria/Bassel%20Al-Assad.json (accessed 2026-10-28). With its beacon and navaid files, as tabled on the DCS: Syria 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.