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Draken was established by Jared Isaacman at Lakeland Linder International Airport in January 2012. In 2015, the company was awarded contracts to provide training for the Air National Guard (ANG) at Volk Field in Wisconsin, for the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) Joint Tactical Air Control at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, and at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, as well as providing “adversary support” at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada. It also won a contract with the French Navy.
In March 2018, Draken announced a $6.7 million expansion of its headquarters and repair infrastructure at Lakeland Linder International Airport.
On 1 June 2018, the Department of Defense announced that the U.S. Air Force (USAF) had awarded Draken a $280 million contract to continue providing training services for the 57th Adversary Tactics Group at Nellis AFB, as well as Luke AFB in Arizona and Hill AFB in Utah.
In November 2018, the ANG awarded Draken a five-year contract to provide red air services to support key combat readiness training exercises throughout the United States.
Draken provides JTAC training and CAS for the USMC at MCAS Cherry Point and MCAS Yuma, Arizona and United States Navy's (USN) Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center at NAS Fallon, Nevada.
Draken was one of seven companies awarded an IDIQ contract to support the USAF's Combat Air Force Contracted Air Support (CAF CAS) program in October 2019.
In 2020, Blackstone bought Draken International.
On May 24, 2021, a Mirage F1 operating in the adversarial role crashed near Nellis AFB. The pilot was killed. Military officials and the National Transportation Safety Board launched investigations.
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In 2021, Draken announced agreements to purchase up to 24 F-16 Fighting Falcons from the Netherlands and Norway. However, as of 2024 the sales have been cancelled and the aircraft redirected to Ukraine and Romania.
From Wikipedia’s article on Draken International, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4