A no drone sign just outside the perimeter of Brussels International Airport in Zaventem, Belgium, after reported overnight drone activity over the airport, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
A no drone sign just outside the perimeter of Brussels International Airport in Zaventem, Belgium, after reported overnight drone activity over the airport, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
LONDON (AP) — Britain is sending equipment and personnel to Belgium after a spate of drone sightings near airports, the head of the U.K. military said Sunday.
In the past week both Belgium’s at Brussels and Liege, one of Europe’s biggest cargo airports, were forced to close temporarily because of drone incursions. That came after a series of unidentified drone flights where U.S. nuclear weapons are stored.
Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the head of Britain’s armed forces, said the U.K. had agreed to “deploy our people, our equipment to Belgium to help them,†after a request from Belgian authorities.
“We don’t know — and the Belgians don’t yet know — the source of those drones, but we will help them by providing our kit and capability, which has already started to deploy to help Belgium,†Knighton told the BBC.
In recent months, drone incidents have forced airports to suspend flights at a time. Russia has been blamed in some cases, but Belgium has not said who has been operating the drones. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken said that he believed that some incidents were part of “a spying operation†that could not have been done by amateurs.
Belgium is home to the headquarters of NATO and the European Union, as well as Europe’s biggest financial clearinghouse holding tens of billions of euros in . Many EU countries want to use those assets as collateral to provide loans to Ukraine, but Belgium has so far resisted.
