Its aircraft fly more than 13,000 hours annually in support of missions related to counternarcotics, counterterrorism, border security, law enforcement, and embassy transportation.

"[6] Air Wing dates to 1978, when the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs was used as the conduit to provide excess U.S. government aircraft to foreign nations to support counternarcotics efforts.

[9] Several times a year the Air Wing also provides humanitarian assistance in disasters when requested by the Department, including during floods in Bolivia and Pakistan in 2010.

The Air Wing has increasingly moved away from the Sikorsky S-61T as it acquires CH-46 Sea Knights from the U.S. Marine Corps, as the latter seeks to replace it with V-22 Osprey tiltrotors.

[10] In Iraq and Afghanistan, private contractor DynCorp was contracted to fly State Department aircraft in the "Embassy Air" program, completing more than 32,000 regularly scheduled flights per year.

The expressed purpose of the facility, which housed five helicopters and approximately 40 State Department and contractor personnel, was to provide flexibility to support evacuations throughout the Middle East in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack and the Syrian civil war spillover in Lebanon.

The Office of the Inspector General in 2017 determined that the base represented "nearly $71 million dollars in potentially unnecessary expenditures", and that it was established without the approval of the Department’s Aviation Governing Board.