ABSTRACT
The Brazilian Air Force is the largest in Latin America, partly due to the quality and indigenous capacity of Brazil’s aerospace industry. This chapter examines changes in the Brazilian Armed Forces structure; the creation of a new joint organisation, the Ministry of Defence; and the issuance of new defence documents and doctrines. The chapter focuses on the technological foundation the air force has gained since its creation and on the build-up of a reliable national aeronautics industry. One of the important themes covered in the text is the meaningful defence restructuring that Brazil underwent during the 1990s. At that time, Brazil united all of its armed forces under a single government ministry. This demanded some internal reorganisation of the air force, which is still in progress. Most of the benefits from the resulting joint mentality came from exercises and operations, both of which produced new understanding of professional military education and especially of aerospace doctrine. These events, coupled with a low defence budget, generated challenges for the air force: not only for development of new capabilities, as expressed in the defence and doctrine documents, but also for the adaptive characteristics required of Brazil’s airmen, who truly represent the ‘force’ inside the air force.
