No. 3 Squadron SLAF
squadron of the Sri Lanka Air Force
No. 3 Maritime Squadron is a maritime patrol squadron of the Sri Lanka Air Force. It was disbanded in 1993 and its aircraft taken over by the No. 8 Light Transport Squadron. It was reestablished in 2019.
History
Maritime Squadron was established in 1971 at SLAF China Bay to provide early warning by them air force commander Paddy Mendis, its units took part in operational duties during the 1971 JVP insurrection. The Squadron shifted to SLAF Katunayake and again relocated to SLAF Base China Bay in the year 1988 to conduct surveillance operations against the LTTE
The SLAF has been in talks to acquire both Dornier Do228 and Kingair B360ER maritime reconnaissance aircraft from India and the United States respectively to enhance their operations since 2020. In 2022, the Squadron had been earmarked for expansion with the US Government agreed to provide two Beechcraft 360ER on a gratis basis under a foreign military sales contract to enhance the SLAF's maritime reconnaissance capability. and the Indian government lending a Dornier Do228 with technical assistants as part of defense agreements around the establishment of a Maritime Rescue Coordinating Centre. Sri Lanka will purchase two more Dorniers on an Indian line of credit.
“No. 3 Squadron SLAF” enters the record as squadron of the Sri Lanka Air Force. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Squadron, SLAF and squadron can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“No. 3 Squadron SLAF” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Squadron, SLAF and squadron provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7043468. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1993, 2019, 1971 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “No. 3 Squadron SLAF” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.