PIREP - The Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea: Defending Costa Rican Sovereignty

Editor’s Note: PIREP is aviation shorthand for pilot report. It’s a means for one pilot to pass on current, potentially useful information to other pilots. In the same fashion, we use this department to let readers know about items of interest.

A video on the popular YouTube Web site shows a dramatic scene in which paramedics give first aid to the inhabitants of an unspecified region affected by floods and landslides. Below, very discreetly, a McDonnell Douglas MD‑500 helicopter with its motor running waits for the sick who need transportation to a better-equipped aid station. Suddenly, the picture changes, showing us people in a Piper PA-31 lowering someone on a stretcher, complete with an intravenous bottle. Images follow one after another, accompanied by the classic Beatles song “Let it Be.” The same MD‑500 flies over flooded areas; a versatile Cessna Soloy U206G transports sick children; refugees surround pilots in olive-drab flight suits, posing for a photo; and so forth. Finally, the wings and emblem of the Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea (Air Vigilance Service) (SVA) of the Costa Rican Ministry of Public Security appear just below the word Thanks!¹

This video represents perhaps the latest illustration of how the SVA tries to project its image as a part of the Fuerza Pública (Public Force), fully engaged in support during disaster situations and utterly dedicated to helping the population. Nevertheless, aside from this moving footage, a closer inspection permits the discerning eye to realize that the SVA’s functions go much farther—up to the point of crossing the thin line that separates a humanitarian entity from a formally established air arm.

One of the oldest democracies in the region, Costa Rica abolished its army on 1 December 1949 after undergoing a revolution that reformed the nation’s structure. Thereafter, internal security became the responsibility of the Civil Guard, which, over the years, transformed itself into today’s Public Security Force, controlled by the Ministry of Public Security and composed of various services, including the Counterdrug Police, National Coast Guard, Public Force Reserve, and, obviously, the SVA, worthy successor to the former Costa Rican air force.

For its part (and according to constitutional mandate), the SVA’s mission involves supporting the other services of the Public Force in preserving internal order in the country, primarily through surveillance efforts and tactical/logistical transport, in addition to the public-relations outreach missions previously discussed. However, that mandate also delegates to the Public Force (hence to the SVA) the protection of national sovereignty, practically converting them into an army and air force, despite how much these institutions pride themselves on not being such things.

Military terminology and organizational structures do not exist in entities under the authority of the Public Force, and one can even find a department of human resources in their organizational charts, along with a lengthy list of directorates and secretariats in the best national-government style. Regardless, both the Public Force and SVA undeniably have the capacity, as well as the requisite equipment and training, to undertake military-style operations. In fact, in the late 1980s, the SVA managed to operate two armed Cessna O‑2As in an efficient manner along the Nicaraguan border area in response to the conflict that counterrevolutionary guerrillas then waged against the Sandanista government of Nicaragua.

The SVA’s current aircraft inventory, stationed at Juan Santamaría International Airport and Tobías Bolaños International Airport, consists of two McDonnell Douglas MD-500E helicopters (tail numbers MSP012 and MSP018), three Cessna Soloy U206G light aircraft (tail numbers MSP004, MSP005, and MSP006), a Cessna T210N (tail number MSP009), a Cessna 210 (tail number MSP010), and two twin-engine Piper PA-31s (tail numbers MSP003 and MSP019). In addition, the service possesses a De Havilland C-7A (tail number MSP002) for tactical-transport missions, but a lack of spare parts has grounded that aircraft for several years. Incidentally, the SVA’s only medium-transport helicopter, a Mil Mi-17 (tail number MSP016), was sold to the Colombian army in 2002.

An MD-500 of the SVA on a surveillance flight over the General Cañas Highway, San Jose, Costa Rica

As in the rest of Central America, the drug-trafficking problem is a matter of national concern for Costa Rica—hence for the Public Force and especially the SVA, both fully engaged in the antidrug struggle in coordination with the US government. The United States maintains a considerable number of surveillance aircraft based at Juan Santamaría International Airport near the capital and at the Liberia International Airport on the Atlantic coast of the country.

But it is precisely in these types of antidrug operations that the SVA has shown its sharp teeth. Since 2004 the service has maintained an airmobile quick-reaction team known as the “Seals,” consisting of police officers specially trained to perform operations to intercept and capture aircraft as well as boats involved in illegal activities, using primarily the SVA’s two MD-500Es configured for assault transport. In this sense, the SVA works very closely with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Coast Guard—the local ones as well as those from the United States, which also maintains a detachment of surveillance boats in the country.

SVA aircraft also constantly conduct operations to seek and eradicate drug plantations, often in the Talamanca Mountains, where 179,000 marijuana plants were recently destroyed. During that operation, SVA aircraft not only provided armed cover to police forces conducting a search of the region on foot but also established an air bridge to facilitate the logistics of the operation.

Despite its very modest size, at least in Central American terms, the SVA has proven very efficient in fulfilling assigned tasks, especially those related to protecting Costa Rican sovereignty, despite the resource limitations endemic in the region’s armed forces. In fact, the SVA relies almost entirely on aid provided by friendly governments such as Taiwan, France, and the United States. However, one commonly sees at least one SVA helicopter or light aircraft participating in any situation that involves the Costa Rican Public Force, be it an accident on the hectic General Cañas Highway or the capture of a large drug shipment along the Guanacaste coast.

1.“Vigilancia Aérea 2,” YouTube, 20 October 2006, http://youtube.com/watch?v=FYsPKajGIsg (accessed 20 April 2007).

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University