It is a sunny autumn day, the temperature is mild. A perfect day to clean the windows, thought 67-year-old Hilde Gielen from Kleine-Brogel in Belgian Limburg. Although she is a bit distracted. “I look up all the time to see if there are drones. But I haven’t seen anything this afternoon.”
As a retired police officer, Gielen lives next to the Kleine-Brogel military air base, her garden and fence are half a meter from “the first line of razor blades”. About two meters behind it is a large fence with barbed wire. “It used to be open forest, and my children would climb high in the trees,” she points to the adjacent field known as the ’10th Tactical Wing’ – also called ‘KB’ by soldiers. With an area of 450 hectares, the base is the largest in the Belgian defense.
KB Air Base suddenly came into the spotlight this week due to the many drone sightings. Six citizen reports were received on Tuesday, in addition to two police sightings. The first detection in Kleine-Brogel was made on October 31, and the incident continued the following week. Drone reports were also received at the Belgian Florennes air base, Marche-en-Famenne army base and the military domains of Heverlee, Elsenborn and Schaffen. The drones could only be seen in the dark.
Hilde Gielen lives next to the Kleine-Brogel military base: “I look up all the time to see if there are drones.”
Photo Aurelien Goubau
The airports of Deurne (Antwerp), Ostend and Brussels Airport were also disturbed by the presence of drones. On Tuesday evening, air traffic in Brussels was interrupted twice. DHL experienced parcel disruption: of the 47 scheduled flights, 19 were canceled or diverted that night. Two thousand medical packages – containing stents, medicines and radioactive isotopes – remained on the ground. Passengers were also affected. On Wednesday, forty flights were canceled at Brussels Airport as a result of the drone observations.
According to Defense Minister Theo Francken (N-VA), this is a “structured operation coordinated in time and space”. Not about amateur drones or hobby pilots. “No classic radio frequencies were used, but 4G and 5G networks. Moreover, the drones flew in formation, something that not everyone can do,” he said on Wednesday during the House of Representatives Committee on National Defense.
A small chapel stands in the middle of the closely guarded military domain of Kleine-Brogel.
Photo Aurelien Goubau
“These are not devices that are for sale on the open market,” agrees Elwin van Herck, drone expert and CEO of the Noordzee Drones training center. “They are unmanned mini-planes. With a wing span of 3 to 4 meters, which can stay in the air for about 20 hours and can travel up to 150 kilometers. This allows them to take off from neighboring countries or from the sea.” According to him, the price tag of such a drone quickly rises to “half a million euros”.
Gielen looks at her glassware in Kleine-Brogel, in which the clear sky is reflected. “I initially thought: ‘This must be the work of stupid passers-by’. The Russians won’t come back to the same place four times, will they?” she asks thoughtfully, window wiper in hand. A few kilometers further on, in the center of the main municipality of Peer, Miet Boonen walks towards the pharmacy “somewhat worried”. “Not knowing where the threat comes from scares me.”
Boudewijn Poelmans in his backyard in Peer, Belgium.
Photo Aurelien Goubau
The drones are the “talk of town”, people are “scared”, says Boudewijn Poelmans (73), retired architect. But he is not worried. “I don’t see Putin standing on our doorstep or the Russians bombing Belgium,” he smiles over a cappuccino and cigarette in the sun. He no longer hears the penetrating sound of the F16 fighter jets taking off. “That is everyday life, but if you are not used to it, you think ‘it is war here’.”
A large number of the more than fifty F-16 fighter planes that Belgium has are stationed at Kleine-Brogel air base. Anyone driving past the fenced base will see many security cameras, a large crane and construction work related to a new infrastructure for the ordered F-35s that will replace the F-16s from 2027. The base is therefore a strategic target for a ‘state actor’.
Belgium is taking the drone provocations “seriously”, emphasizes Minister of the Interior Bernard Quintin (Mouvement Réformateur). He called for a meeting of the National Security Council, where Prime Minister Bart De Wever, the deputy prime ministers, and the ministers of Justice, Defense, Home Affairs and Foreign Affairs discussed the security threat on Thursday. It was decided that the National Air Security Center (NASC) in the Walloon Brabant Bevekom must be “fully operational” by 1 January 2026 at the latest, so that security services can “cooperate in an integrated manner”. “To prepare Belgium for future challenges in air safety,” said Defense Minister Francken.
In Peer, Flemish, several drones flew above and around the Kleine-Brogel military base.
Photo Aurelien Goubau
A cabinet meeting will follow on Friday in which a 50 million euro drone defense plan will be discussed, with the purchase having to be made via NATO. The agenda of the Council of Ministers includes the expansion of ‘counterdrone capacity’, ‘the need for modern detection systems’, stricter registration obligations and a ‘protocol to neutralize drones’.
On Wednesday it was announced that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte spoke with Defense Minister Francken about the drone invasion and is prepared to provide “support”. Earlier that day, Francken sowed confusion by stating that “the activation of Article 4 of the NATO Charter will be studied in the coming days.” Article 4 obliges NATO countries to hold emergency consultations as soon as a member state believes that its security or territory is threatened. Poland invoked the article in September after Russian drones were detected in Polish airspace. Defense Minister Francken later stated that he “didn’t mean it that way.”
There is no concrete evidence yet – the federal investigations are still ongoing – but it is now common knowledge that the Belgian security services suspect that Russia is behind the provocations. “Very plausible,” says Joris Van Bladel, a Russia expert at the Egmont Institute for International Relations in Brussels. The Russian embassy in Brussels strongly denies espionage or interference. “That also fits in with the Russian pattern of hybrid warfare,” says Van Bladel.
Critics and former defense personnel talk about ‘years of underinvestment’ in Belgian defense and ‘ignored warnings’ about drones. Belgium is no exception, says Van Bladel. “It is completely normal that we do not immediately have an appropriate response to the drone race. Even Russia and Ukraine have difficulty securing their airspace.” According to experts, the fact that Belgium is being put under pressure also offers the opportunity to take on a pioneering role.
The Belgian drone incidents are not isolated. Air traffic also came to a standstill in Hannover, Germany, on Wednesday evening due to a drone spotted near the airport. In the days before that, things happened in Bremen and Berlin. Germany also points to Russia; the Kremlin denies.
A cyclist rides past the Kleine-Brogel military base.
Photo Aurelien Goubau
It should come as little surprise that Belgium – as the ‘heart of the EU and NATO’ – is currently “in the eye of the storm”, says Van Bladel. He also points to Euroclear, the financial services provider in Brussels that houses much of the Russian money, which has been frozen since the invasion of Ukraine. During an EU summit in October, Prime Minister De Wever temporarily blocked the European plan to use those funds for Ukraine. According to the Kremlin, such an action would be an “act of war.”
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There was also a recent one altercation between Defense Minister Francken and Dmitry Medvedev, Vice-Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, on X. And then there was the meeting of Russian dissidents and opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Tuesday in Brussels. He also visited European authorities for “lobbying work”, according to Van Bladel, who met Khodorkovsky in person this week. While the Flemish media spoke of a ‘thorn in the side of the Kremlin’, Russia expert Van Bladel states that Putin is “little impressed by the opposition”.
In Kleine-Brogel it has been an open secret for years that there are American nuclear weapons on the base. “I know people who work on the base and confirm that story,” says local resident Poelmans.
Els Vanduffel (41), who works as a coordinator in a healthcare institution, walks out of the butcher’s shop talking and laughing with an acquaintance. “I am not afraid of drones and nuclear weapons. In fact, we live so close that if a nuclear bomb were to go off here, I would be swept away in one go and not feel anything.”
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Military and aviation equipment at the Kleine-Brogel base in Belgium.
Photo Aurelien Goubau
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