UK sends military experts and equipment to Belgium after drone sightings near airports

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LONDON (AP) — Britain is sending anti-drone equipment and personnel to Belgium after a spate of sightings near airports and military bases, the head of the U.K. military said Sunday.

In the past week both Belgium’s main international airport 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 near a military base 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.

Defense Secretary John Healey said the U.K. was sending a team of Royal Air Force specialists to NATO ally Belgium “to counter rogue drone activity.”

“As hybrid threats grow, our strength lies in our alliances and our collective resolve to defend, deter and protect our critical infrastructure and airspace,” he said.

In recent months, drone incidents across Europe 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 frozen Russian assets. Many EU countries want to use those assets as collateral to provide loans to Ukraine, but Belgium has so far resisted.