Overview
- Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton and Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed an immediate UK deployment of specialist RAF personnel and equipment to support Belgian counter‑UAS operations.
- Belgium requested allied assistance; Germany and France have also dispatched or committed anti‑drone teams to work alongside Belgian authorities.
- Recent drone sightings temporarily halted flights at Brussels and Liège, with about 3,000 Brussels Airlines passengers affected and the carrier reporting considerable costs from cancellations and diversions.
- Attribution remains unproven, with officials calling Russian involvement plausible and the Kremlin denying it, while some European leaders frame the incidents as hybrid activity linked to broader geopolitical pressures.
- Belgium convened emergency security talks and is accelerating national air‑security measures, as allied teams focus on ground‑based detection, tracking and non‑kinetic defeat tools such as jamming.