Grupo VYCEA, Argentine Air Force

Grupo VYCEA is the Spanish acronym for Grupo Vigilancia y Control del Espacio Aéreo (Air Space's Surveillance and Control Group). Grupo VYCEA is a group of the Argentine Air Force, headquartered at Parque San Martín, Merlo since 1952.

Grupo VYCEA, or just VYCEA, operates a military radar base that occupies a total area of 240 Ha. The core of the base is an old radar bought to Bendix Corporation in 1976. The radar is mounted on the top of a 23 meters high tower and it’s erected over a subterranean bunker that contains the main control room.

In this room the information captured by military radars deployed along the Argentine border is collected and processed in real time by a recently acquired computerized system.

The group depends directly from the Air Operations Command (Spanish: Comando de Operaciones Aéreas) and it’s commanded by a commodore (Spanish: comodoro), a rank equivalent to Group Captain in the RAF and colonel in the USAF.

On 2009, the government of Spain donates two 3D radars to be mounted in Resistencia, Chaco and Posadas, Misiones. Others seven 3D radars are being built by INVAP