{"id":559377,"date":"2025-11-09T13:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/559377\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T13:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T13:00:11","slug":"uk-to-provide-military-support-to-belgium-after-drone-incursions-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/559377\/","title":{"rendered":"UK to provide military support to Belgium after drone incursions \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/uk\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/uk\/\">UK<\/a> has agreed to provide military support to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/belgium\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/belgium\/\">Belgium<\/a> after drone incursions on its airspace that are suspected to have been carried out by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/russia\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/russia\">Russia<\/a>, the UK\u2019s new chief of defence staff has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Drones have been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/europe\/2025\/10\/02\/drones-frozen-billions-and-a-hungarian-villain-copenhagens-scandi-noir-summit\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/europe\/2025\/10\/02\/drones-frozen-billions-and-a-hungarian-villain-copenhagens-scandi-noir-summit\/\">spotted above Belgian airports<\/a> and military bases in the last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">That came after a string of recent drone sightings over European airports, including in Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Air chief marshal Richard Knighton said his counterpart in Belgium asked this week if the UK would be prepared to provide support.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/world\/europe\/2025\/10\/02\/drones-frozen-billions-and-a-hungarian-villain-copenhagens-scandi-noir-summit\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Drones, frozen billions and a Hungarian villain: Copenhagen\u2019s Scandi-noir summitOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Knighton, who took up his role in September, told the BBC\u2019s Sunday Morning with Laura Kuenssberg programme: \u201cThe defence secretary [John Healey] and I agreed at the end of last week that we would deploy our people, our equipment to Belgium to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Brussels Airport closed temporarily on Thursday night after drones were spotted nearby.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Air traffic was also suspended there and at Liege Airport on Tuesday because of drone sightings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Knighton said: \u201cIt is important to be clear, though, that we don\u2019t know \u2013 and the Belgians don\u2019t yet know \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He added the UK and its 31 Nato allies \u201cwill work to support each other, and that\u2019s why the defence secretary and I are very happy to see UK military personnel deployed to support Belgium\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Some officials have blamed Russia for drone overflights in the European countries\u2019 airspaces but the Kremlin has denied any involvement. &#8211; PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK has agreed to provide military support to Belgium after drone incursions on its airspace that are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1789,748,393,4884,1144,332,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-559377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115519869694483418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}