EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—Belgium’s airports aren’t supposed to feel like frontline infrastructure in a shadow war, but that’s exactly how they’ve looked this month, as mysterious drones keep slipping into some of Europe’s most tightly regulated airspace.

On the night of November 4–5, Brussels Airport, the country’s main passenger hub, was forced to shut down after drone sightings near the airfield. Dozens of flights were later canceled or diverted. At Liège, one of Europe’s biggest cargo hubs, drones “forced a sequence of flight interruptions between 9 p.m. Thursday and 1 a.m. Friday, and again between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Friday,” said Christian Delcourt, the airport’s head of communications, in remarks
reported by the Associated Press.

The airport closures came on the heels of multiple drone flights near Kleine-Brogel air base, widely believed to host U.S. nuclear weapons. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken wrote on X that at least three large drones were detected in a single night.

“This was not a simple flyover, but a clear mission with Kleine-Brogel as the target,” warned Francken.

Belgian authorities now say the federal prosecutor’s office has opened eight investigations tied to 17 separate drone incidents over airports, military bases and nuclear infrastructure.

All of this is happening in a country that hosts NATO and EU headquarters and sits on tens of billions of euros in frozen Russian assets, a tempting backdrop for anyone interested in hybrid pressure.

The UK has already moved from watching to intervening.

“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,” Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, the head of the British armed forces, told the BBC. AP and Reuters both confirmed that British experts and anti-drone equipment are now being sent to Belgium.

Belgium is scrambling to catch up. After emergency security talks, Francken said the country would get a new National Air Safety Center at Beauvechain air base “fully operational” by January 1 to tighten airspace monitoring and response.

Not An Isolated Incident

The strange traffic over Belgium is part of a much wider pattern. On September 10, Poland said 19 objects entered its airspace during a large Russian attack on Ukraine; those “posing a threat” were shot down, and Prime Minister Donald Tusk called the incident a “large-scale provocation” while activating NATO’s Article 4 consultations.

Less than two weeks later, two or three large drones repeatedly flew over Copenhagen Airport, shutting Scandinavia’s biggest hub for nearly four hours and briefly closing airspace over Oslo as well.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called it “the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date” and said the activity seemed designed “to disrupt and create unrest.”

According to a survey of recent incidents compiled by the Ukrainian National News agency (UNN) based on European reporting, at least ten European countries — including Romania, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Norway, France, Germany, Lithuania, Estonia and Belgium — have logged suspicious drone incursions in recent months. A German air navigation report cited in that roundup said 144 drone flights were registered this year, 35 near Frankfurt Airport alone.

Still, the drones remain officially unattributed; a blurry mix of espionage, pressure and probing. But from Brussels to Warsaw to Copenhagen, Europe’s leaders are learning that the new front line may be floating silently above their runways.