Colonel Gerardo Tajes

President of the Space Affairs Commission Uruguayan Air Force

Colonel Gerardo Tajes currently serves as Director of the Secretariat to the Commander-in-Chief of the Uruguayan Air Force. In this capacity, he also holds the position of Chief of the Commander’s Personal Staff, with responsibility for overseeing the Institution’s Legal and Notarial Department. He is currently commanding pilot assigned to Air Squadron No. 5 (helicopters), with more than 2,400 flight hours in fixed and rotary wings. Colonel Tajes has flown fixed-wing aircraft including the Cessna T-41D, Leonardo T-260EU, Pilatus PC-7U, and Cessna U206H and rotary wings like Westland Wessex HC-MK2. Currently he is a pilot instructor for Bell UH-1H, educated in the Argentinian Army Air Force, principal pilot of the Bell 212 and AS-365 copilot. He participated in four deployments in Africa under the flag of the United Nations accumulating more than 1,000 hours in the UNMEE operations in Ethiopia and, with MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of Congo, completing 44 months in the mission area. He graduated from the Military Aeronautics School, the Higher Command Course, and the Air Force Joint Staff Course of the Uruguayan Air Force (FAU), and holds a bachelor's degree in Aerospace Military Defense. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in Space Defense. In the academic field, he serves as a military instructor in Aerospace Technology at the Uruguayan Air Force Academy, an institute he has been appointed to direct starting February 2026. This passion for teaching is also shared in the civilian sector, where he teaches astronomy at the secondary education level. In his free time, he is taking courses toward a teaching certification in astronomy at the Artigas Institute. Additionally, in his private activities, he is a certified sommelier and an advanced PADI/SSI diver, specialized in wreck diving, Deep Diving, and Stress & Rescue.