Belgium’s Defence Minister Theo Francken said the drones were clearly trying to “spy”, highlighting that one of the drones stood for a “long time” over the base.
As European nations remain on high alert due to airspace intrusions since the past couple of months, the Belgian defence minister has said that the drones spotted above the country’s military airbase over the weekend were there “to spy” on army’s fighter jets, CNN reported.
Belgium’s Defence Minister Theo Francken said the drones were clearly trying to “spy”, highlighting that one of the drones stood for a “long time” over the base. “They come to spy, to see where the F-16s are, where the munitions are, and other highly strategic things,” Theo told CNN.
The drones allegedly spied over Belgian’s Kleine-Brogel Air Base which lies in the municipality of Peer and is considered as the largest unit of Belgian defence forces and aims to “fundamentally contribute to NATO’s nuclear deterrence strategy,” its website says. Media reports have stated about the presence of US nuclear weapons at the site.
The latest sightings of drones in the European country occurs when NATO is on high alert after recent incursions of aircrafts and drones into airspace controlled by the North Atlantic military alliance.
Belgium’s Kleine-Brogel Air Base mostly houses F-16 fighter jets, according to its website, but the F-16 is set to be replaced by “ultramodern” F-35 fighter jets in a “few years”.
Belgian defence minister Theo, speaking on the latest drone sightings, said that Russia has been “trying to do this in all European countries” but did not directly accuse Moscow of having carried out the drone sightings above military bases in the country. “Is it the Russians now? I cannot say that, but the motives are clear,” he said.
Last month, Lithuania shut its border with Belarus due to “constant violations” of its sovereign airspace, its foreign ministry had said. And at the time, Belgian defence officials had also said that an unspecified number of drones flew over Elsenborn military base near its border with Germany.
