Security Concerns Mount After Drones Fly Above U.S. Nuclear Weapons Storage Site in Belgium
Belgium Defense Minister: “‘It’s not a drone that just happened to cross the military base. It was there for a long time, so it was definitely for spying.”
Over the weekend, unidentified drones were detected hovering above Belgium’s Kleine Brogel air base, which his the location of a U.S. nuclear weapons storage facility, prompting investigations into a possible espionage operation.
Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken said Sunday that a jammer was unsuccessfully used during the overnight drone sightings over Belgium’s Kleine Brogel airbase, which is used by NATO forces.
“Last night, we received 3 reports of drones above Kleine Brogel, of a larger type and flying at higher altitude,” Francken wrote on X. “It was not a simple overflight, but a clear command targeting Kleine Brogel. A drone jammer was used, but without success.
“A helicopter and police vehicles pursued the drone, but lost it after several kilometers,” he added.
…Francken said on Saturday that he would meet police next week to assess the threat and take the necessary steps to find and arrest the drone pilots.
A spokesperson for Francken’s office told Reuters news agency police were investigating the incident. Government ministers will discuss the sightings this week.
🇧🇪 – A Monday and a Saturday, drones spotted over the Marche-en-Famenne military base in Belgium, Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken told VRT NWS. "It are not amateurs, but skilled drone pilots." Barracks guard noticed drones over crucial parts of the army brigade… pic.twitter.com/wUwUa0Fc7y
— EuroWatcher – News for you (@EuroWatcherEUW) October 29, 2025
Francken noted that the drones appeared to target sensitive locations, including F-16s and munitions.
‘It’s not a drone that just happened to cross the military base. It was there for a long time, so it was definitely for spying,’ Francken said.
The US stores an estimated 10 to 20 B61 nuclear bombs at the Kleine Brogel Air Base, which plays a key role in NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy in Europe and hosts F-16 fighter jets, according to the base’s website.
The site notes that these jets are scheduled to be replaced in the coming years by the F-35A, the US Air Force’s newest fifth-generation fighter.
‘This was not a simple flyover, but a clear attack targeting Kleine Brogel,’ Francken said. ‘It is not clear who is responsible for the drone sightings.’
Earlier this fall, a drone incursion into Denmark disrupted its airport. More mysterious drone sightings have continued throughout Europe.
Drones were also spotted flying above other military air bases – the Leopoldsburg, in central Limburg province, and Marche-en-Famenne in the south-east of the country.
VRT reported over the weekend that drones were also seen close to coastal Ostend and Antwerp’s Deurne airports.
It marks the latest incident involving drones disrupting European airspace in recent months.
In October, unconfirmed drone sightings forced Germany’s Munich airport to suspend operations twice in 24 hours.
[Featured image via YouTube]
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Comments
I’m so old I can remember people bad mouthing Musk for saying drones are the future of warfare.
Why didn’t anyone try to shoot it down? And why was it pursued from the ground rather than by air? Keystone cops at work.
My first guess on firing wildly into the sky being a bad idea is the Nearby inhabited areas. We need anti-drone lasers in production.
You fire at the drone, not wildly into the sky.
Really? Does firing at the drone, instead of merely into the air, cancel gravity? Where do you think all the projectiles and shrapnel will go, even if it hits the drone? How many rounds of ammunition do you think it would take to hit a target that small? There are no missiles built to track and hit such targets, so anti-aircraft fire is probably the only viable option, and even missiles create a shower of shrapnel. The math changes when the damage that can be done by falling debris is less than the damage that can be done by the target itself, but drones like this aren’t causing damage on the ground so the math doesn’t work. Sheesh.
Your cost-benefit analysis doesn’t take into account the cost of stealing military secrets. Sure, there is no ground damage by a spy drone, but there is plenty of military secrets damage. I think trying to shoot down the drone would have been the prudent and proper thing to have done rather than letting it steal military secrets.
Funny you should mention that. Look up the channel Tech Ingredients on youtube. They’ve done some videos on that and I think are still working on more.
They couldn’t be followed back where they came from using radar, satellites, etc?
They couldn’t be shot down using artillery, jets, etc?
Why didn’t the drone jammers work?
I have nothing but questions and doubts concerning this report.
Of course its a target for espionage. Hasn’t anyone thought of this and taken some kind of precautions?
NATO can’t be this inept. Somethings up. What is it?
Shooting drones down is simply not a viable option for many reasons, mostly because they’re much smaller than the types of aircraft for which conventional munitions (flak, air-to-air missiles, and SAMs) are made.
Radar tracking to their operators is near impossible, because a drone can fly nap-of-the-earth during its ingress and egress (“falling off” any tracking radar). Coupled with a small radar cross-section, they are not trackable when piloted by anyone who is relatively skilled.
They tried jamming. The fact that didn’t work means it was either out of range/the jamming was of insufficient power (both of which are factors of each other – the jammer has a finite amount of power, so its effective range is limited), and/or the target either was hardened against jamming (suggesting a sophisticated operator) or, at least in it’s “loiter” phase over the target, the drone was flying a pre-programmed path, rather than relying on guidance from a ground controller, making it impossible to jam.
“They couldn’t be followed back where they came from using radar, satellites, etc?”
Once you have the secrets, the drone is expendable. Maybe it doesn’t go home.
drones are ,a stated before, the next biggest little choice of major weaponary
they can out man and at a much lower cost and much more accessible to the commoner ……….think about that last part
I know, buy an Iron Beam battery. Oh wait, you’re boycotting Israel? Good for you.
NATO is failing the test. That these drones loiter unopposed over NATO bases in Belgium is half of the intel the actors want. NATO’s response is beyond flaccid.
It could be 500 armed unopposed drones, cratering the runway, taking out NATO hq, radar antennae, SAM sites, hangers, and other state buildings and targeted individuals.
NATO must scramble fighters on every occasion this happens and shoot them down. Better yet, launch CAP drones and shoot them down. NGC’s UCAS was designed as an autonomous low observable, deep penetration attack carrier based aircraft. The DOD of course changed the mission to tanker(!) and handed it to Lockheed. Not a big stretch to arm it.
NATO is derelict in its defensive duties but have we forgotten that our political and military leaders allowed a huge-A$$ Chinese balloon to traverse our continent and then shot it down as an afterthought. No explanation to the hoi-polloi about this escapade.
As to the efficacy of shooting down drones, the Israeli’s, and the US and British navy shot down thousands of drones during the latest Middle East wars.
The Ukrainians shoot down Russian drones and the Russians shoot down Ukrainian drones on a daily basis in Putin’s ongoing wet dream
The technology to destroy drones is here and evolving as fast as the technology to produce better and badder drones
What is missing is the interest and will to buy and employ the technology. In Europe blame any EU bureaucrat, in the US blame the red tape miasma that is our entire government.
BTW, the bulbous front end is certainly housing a satellite antenna – cant jam it from the ground.
You’ve convinced me. Blow it out of the sky. But that’s apparently not the preferred course of fat, useless NATO bureaucrats.
so much of the drone technology comes from israel that the nato losers are being “forced’ to ( temporarily) drop their pro plo format and deal with that fact as they need to show djt that they are willing to help in the defense of their own countries
while of course they wait out trump ( unless he caves,,,, and I think he will) and will resume their freebies from the usa asap
Anti-drone technology needs to get better. Radio jamming, lasers, and aircraft can not bring them down. What about anti-drone drones? Just an idea.
I disagree about not being able to bring them down. Ukraine and Israel have had some success in downing drones. I expect Israel to have more success with its recently developed laser beam, off limits to Europe because boycotting Israel arms.
Israel and Ukraine bring down drones because they’re almost always armed. As I mention above, if the act of bringing down a drone can cause more damage than the drone itself can cause, then generally there will be no effort to bring it down.
I’m thinking along the same line as Tsquared. Think suicide drones that can be piloted into a collision with the target drone. Still, the calculus above (regarding damage on the ground) would still apply.
As I said to you earlier, your analysis doesn’t take into account the loss of valuable military secrets.
It was operated by a vacationing Indian truck driver from California.