Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · T-4, Syria's largest air base: MiG-25s and Su-24s, Iranian drones, Israeli strikes and Turkish ambitions.
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
- North of Tiyas and west of Palmyra, Homs Governorate [1]
- Country or territory
- Syria
- Coordinates
- 34.5226° N, 37.6299° E [2]
- Elevation
- 1,805 ft (550 m) [2]
- Identifiers
- OS72
- Other names
- T-4 Air Base [1]
- Opened
- no opening date is given in the sources consulted
- Theatre
- Middle East
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · No current operator
- Roles today
- None documented in the sources consulted
- Operators
- Syrian Air Force · Syria, air force · until Dec 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
1 Squadron [1]
- Service
- Syria, air force
- Basing
- Not stated in the sources
- Aircraft
- MiG-25PDS/PU/RB
- When
- date not given
5 Squadron [1]
- Service
- Syria, air force
- Basing
- Not stated in the sources
- Aircraft
- MiG-25PDS/PU/RB
- When
- date not given
819 Squadron [1]
- Service
- Syria, air force
- Basing
- Not stated in the sources
- Aircraft
- Su-24MK2
- When
- date not given
827 Squadron [1]
- Service
- Syria, air force
- Basing
- Not stated in the sources
- Aircraft
- Su-22M4
- When
- date not given
Earlier
Soviet naval aircraft, deployed from time to time [1]
- Service
- Soviet Union (until 1991), navy
- Basing
- Temporarily deployed
- When
- 1970–1989
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09/27 [2] | 10,520 ft (3,206 m) | 150 ft (46 m) | asphalt |
| 09R/27L [2]surface coded GRE in source 2 | 10,115 ft (3,083 m) | 170 ft (52 m) | unpaved |
| 17/35 [2]surface coded GRE in source 2 | 8,830 ft (2,691 m) | 180 ft (55 m) | unpaved |
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
- None documented in the sources cited
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Tiyas Air Base (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway
- Apron
- Hangar or terminal
Runways, taxiways, aprons and buildings mapped at the airfield, which OpenStreetMap gives no 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 “Tiyas” · 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: Persian Gulf, DCS: Sinai, DCS: Iraq, DCS: Iraq North, Falcon BMS: Israel.
Role today
Tiyas, known as T-4, is Syria’s largest air base, in Homs Governorate west of Palmyra. [1] Members of the Free Syrian Army captured it in early December 2024. [1] Turkey then began working to take control of it and was preparing to deploy Hisar or SIPER air defence systems there, according to Middle East Eye’s sources, and the base was later bombed by the Israeli Air Force. [1]
History
In the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet Union had access to Tiyas for periodic deployments of naval aircraft. [1] Its squadrons have included two of MiG-25s, one of Su-24MK2s and one of Su-22M4s. [1]
In the civil war the Syrian Air Force and Iran’s Quds Force flew operations from it against the Islamic State and the opposition. [1] The Islamic State attacked it in December 2016, a day after taking Palmyra, and claimed to have destroyed four aircraft. [1] Israel struck it on 10 February 2018, destroying the main observation tower according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and again, reportedly, on 9 April 2018, destroying a drone hangar and an Iranian-supplied Tor system before it was operational. [1] Iran-backed militias launched drone strikes from it against US bases in northern Syria in summer 2021, and Israel struck it again on 8 October 2021, saying Iranian forces still used it. [1]
The airfield
Source 2 lists three runways: 09/27, asphalt, 10,520 ft long, and two unpaved strips, 09R/27L and 17/35. [2] The Wikipedia infobox gives one concrete runway of 3,200 m. [1]
Sources
- Tiyas Air Base. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiyas_Air_Base (accessed 2026-10-28). History, the strikes of 2016–2021, the 2024 capture and the squadrons listed.
- Airport and runway data, OS72. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Rows for OS72 Tiyas Air Base in airports.csv and runways.csv: position, elevation and three runways.
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Syria airbases (Tiyas.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/Tiyas.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.