Only three military aircraft in operation: Ecuadorian President suspects pact with drug trafficking

The Ecuadorian Air Force (FAE) has only 3 of its 16 aircraft operating at the Manta Air Base.

According to President Guillermo Lasso, the finding would confirm the existence of different pacts that a past government would have reached with drug trafficking in Ecuador.

Of the 16 fighters that the FAE has at the military base, 13 are unserviceable.

According to President Lasso, this shows how the country was vulnerable to penetration and attacks by transnational criminal organizations in the past.

A fighter plane is a military aircraft used primarily for aerial combat with other aircraft.

These aircraft are distinguished from bombers, designed primarily to attack ground targets by dropping bombs.

Fighters are small and fast aircraft, and many have a secondary ground attack and fighter-bomber capability.

The term is also used for ground attack aircraft with fighter capability.

The fighter aircraft available to the FAE is the Atlas Cheetah of South African origin and the IAI Kfir of Israeli origin.

Both belong to the Combat Wing No. 21 Taura Air Base.

The president announced it in a solemn ceremony commemorating the 202nd anniversary of the independence of Portoviejo.

At the meeting, President Lasso said that since the beginning of his administration, he had found many different types of equipment in disuse that should be useful to serve the country.

The president also said that it has become clear to him that there is a pact between a past government and drug traffickers, supported by the indifference of the previous administration.

He assured that this must be clear “because we must keep the memory of history alive so that we do not make the same mistakes of the past”.

But this is not the first time President Guillermo Lasso has raised accusations like these.

In November 2021, he claimed to have confirmed that Ecuador is used as a transit country for drugs destined for the United States and the European Union.

On occasion, the president lamented that in the last 14 years, before those of his government, Ecuador has become a drug-consuming country and attributed the situation of violence and crime to the two governments that preceded him in office, that of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and that of Lenín Moreno (2017-2021).

Correa’s government was accused of deliberately handing over “part of the Ecuadorian territory to drug trafficking”.

In the solemn session, President Lasso added that 120 new police officers, graduated among 1500 in Guayaquil, will go to work in Portoviejo.

They will be equipped and supplied with uniforms, weapons, armored vehicles, and technology to strengthen the intelligence work of the national police and containment of transnational organized crime.

This work will be deployed cooperatively with the Armed Forces to “prevent drug trafficking from trying to take over Ecuador”.

He also announced that he would receive a group of U.S. senators interested in learning about Ecuador’s security proposal.

The meeting with the senators continues the approach made to U.S. President Joe Biden last June.

Manabí is one of the Ecuadorian provinces that has experienced an increase in violent deaths, approaching 380 in 2022, while 197 were killed in 2021.

Lasso assured that 114 gangs had been dismantled in the province, and nearly ten tons of drugs have been seized this year.

With information from Infobae