Due to the high altitude and extreme weather conditions, temperatures reach minus 30 degrees in winters, affecting the men and material, the window to carry out work is limited. Effectively, the major work on the airfield was completed in seven months.

Nyoma is the fourth IAF base in Ladakh, the highest airfield in the country and the fifth highest in the world now.

Constructed in less than three years, the airfield is designed to house a number of military unmanned, rotary-wing, fixed-wing aircraft, including heavier transport planes, like C-17 Globemaster III, and fighter jets, like the Sukhoi-30MKI.

Apart from Nyoma, the IAF has airfields at Leh, Thoise and Kargil, as well as Advanced Landing Grounds at Daulet Beg-Oldie and Fukche in Ladakh.

After the 1962 India-China war, the Nyoma airstrip was not in use for decades before it got reactivated in 2009 when Indian Air Force's transport aircraft AN-32 landed for the first time.

Post the 2020 India-China border standoff, the IAF had used the existing Nyoma landing ground and operated its transport aircraft such as C-130Js and AN-32s and helicopters like Apache and Chinook from Nyoma in support of the military's forward deployments.