Three Boeing 727s sat on the military side of N’Djamena airport in Chad, and then they vanished from public flight trackers. United Nations investigators now say those jets carried fighters, mercenaries, weapons and drones to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces.
The finding sits in a draft report from the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan, due out in September. The panel, which polices the Security Council’s arms embargo on Darfur, tied the aircraft to companies associated with Steven Shaulis, a former US Army Special Forces soldier and longtime government contractor. Reuters had earlier traced three aging Boeings from a Chad airport to RSF supply hubs across Sudan, Libya and Somalia. The UN draft, reported by Reuters on July 29, 2026, backs that account.
How the planes moved
According to The Defense Post, one of the three aircraft came from Brazil and two from the US operator Kalitta Charters II. They reached Chad beginning in November 2024. The two Kalitta jets were bought by Contractor Airways, which Shaulis owns jointly with Craig Munro. Munro has previously denied any RSF link.
The panel said the crews took “deliberate steps to avoid detection while in flight.” Between January and July 2026, none of the flights showed up on independent trackers. Yet on the ground in Nyala, the RSF’s main logistics hub in Darfur, observers logged repeated night landings by Boeing 727s and Ilyushin Il-76 transports.
The experts built their case on four sources, including two eyewitnesses in Nyala and communications from two UN member states. In the report’s words: “The RSF utilized the N’Djamena-Nyala air corridor to transport fighters, foreign mercenaries, and military equipment.”
Mercenaries and a siege
The same report describes 1,500 to 2,000 Colombian mercenaries, known as the Desert Wolves. A UAE-based firm, Global Security Services Group, recruited them. Contractors set up a base in Nyala in 2025 and, the panel was told, flew drones and helped plan the RSF assault on El-Fasher. The al-Fashir siege ran through October 2025.
A war that reaches far beyond Darfur
For families in Sudan the cost is already enormous. The Defense Post reports that the war, running since 2023, has left nearly 20 million people facing acute food insecurity, 8.9 million displaced inside the country, and more than 150,000 reportedly dead. Fuel, food and shipping routes across the wider region feel the strain, which is why communities well outside Africa follow how this fighting is supplied.
The planes are the visible part of that supply chain. The UN panel will publish its full findings in September.
Sources
- Aircraft linked to US contractor used to supply weapons to Sudan's RSF (The Defense Post)
- Exclusive: Boeings identified in Reuters report carried weapons for Sudanese paramilitary, UN experts find (Reuters, carried by The Star)
