Simon Wohlfahrt / AFP via Getty Images
- Belgium’s defense minister said three drones were spotted over a sensitive military base on Sunday.
- Theo Francken said the drones were clearly spying, but a deployed jammer failed to neutralize them.
- Several vehicles, including a helicopter, were deployed to chase one drone but lost track of it.
Belgium, the host of NATO’s headquarters, said it’s been struggling to deal with drones spying on a critical military base housing its advanced fighter aircraft.
Theo Francken, Belgium’s defense minister, wrote on X on Sunday that the country had detected at least three large drones flying high over the Kleine-Brogel air base within a single night.
“This was not a simple flyover, but a clear mission with Kleine-Brogel as the target,” he wrote.
The incident underscores concern in the West that Europe is unprepared for the evolving fight against hostile uncrewed aerial systems.
On Sunday, Francken wrote that a deployed drone jammer couldn’t neutralize the aircraft. He speculated that the failure may have been due to issues with distance or the jammer not targeting the correct radio frequency.
He added that a police helicopter and several vehicles were mobilized to pursue one of the drones, but they eventually lost track of it after chasing the system for several kilometers.
Francken wrote that more counter-uncrewed aerial systems “are urgently needed.”
While he didn’t say on Sunday who was operating the drones, European leaders have continually suggested that Russia is the culprit for a series of recent similar incursions in NATO territories.
Earlier this week, the defense minister said he was proposing a $58 million plan to immediately purchase systems that can detect and destroy enemy drones, warning that Belgium was in an “interim phase” between peace and war. Francken has also urged Belgium to consider long-term investments of some $580 million for anti-drone defenses.
For context, Brussels plans to spend roughly $38 billion between 2026 and 2034 to shore up what it said are gaps in its country’s forces. In February, it raised its 2025 defense budget to $13.8 billion, or about 2% of Belgium’s GDP.
Kleine-Brogel, in northeastern Belgium, hosts the country’s fleet of F-16 Fighting Falcons and is set to be where Brussels will keep its new F-35 Lightning IIs.
The US is also largely believed to be storing several dozen nuclear weapons at Kleine-Brogel as part of its nuclear deterrence strategy in Europe.
The Belgian defense ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
Francken’s statement on Sunday comes as Belgium has reported drone incursions over several bases, including repeated sightings this weekend at Marche-en-Famenne, which hosts a logistics camp for the Belgian army.
On October 3, Belgium reported at least 15 drone sightings over its Elsenborn training camp near the German border.
European NATO has been on high alert for airspace violations since early September, when multiple Russian drones entered Poland in one night and prompted Warsaw to activate its forces to intercept.
Multiple alliance members, such as Denmark and Norway, have since reported drone incursions over military installations and civilian airports.
The string of incidents has left Europe scrambling for cost-effective ways to fight enemy drones, which are often far cheaper than the interceptors that NATO traditionally relied on for aerial threats.
Some NATO allies, including Denmark and Poland, have sought to bolster their air defenses with help from Ukraine, which now often fights hundreds of Russian drones in a single night.
