Belgium revives Cold War air defense squadron after 37 years

Belgium has brought back the 51st Squadron, an air defense unit that guarded NATO airspace with Nike Hercules missiles during the Cold War, after 37 years without it.

Defense Minister Theo Francken said that the Belgian Air Force reactivated the squadron on November 9 at a ceremony at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels, and that the unit will once again be responsible for the country’s ground-based air defense.

The squadron will operate the new systems Belgium is buying under its “Blue Dome” plan: 10 NASAMS missile systems, 20 Skyranger 30 anti-aircraft guns, 14 modern radars and 54 command vehicles, all linked into a single network. Francken said the Skyranger contract was being signed the same day.

“Rebuilding an air defense, starting from zero, is no small task,” Francken said.

The 51st Squadron was formed in 1959 and equipped with Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles to help protect NATO airspace against Soviet bombers. It was disbanded after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the rest of Belgium’s ground-based air defense was gradually phased out in the years that followed. Since then, Belgium has relied largely on its fighter jets to defend its airspace.

The new systems are designed to work in layers. NASAMS, built by Norway’s Kongsberg with Raytheon, fires missiles that Francken said can intercept cruise missiles, fighter jets and helicopters at ranges of up to 50 km (31 miles). Rheinmetall’s Skyranger 30 is a turret with a radar-guided 30 mm cannon mounted on an armored vehicle, built to shoot down drones, including swarms, and other low-flying targets at short range. Germany has already begun fielding the system, and the Bundeswehr received its first Skyranger 30 air defense system earlier.

Belgium is buying the equipment together with the Netherlands, which operates the same systems and is helping train the new Belgian unit. The two countries signed a cooperation agreement at the NATO summit in Ankara in July, and Belgium committed €3.1 billion ($3.46 billion) to the joint purchase, including ammunition, Breaking Defense reported. The radars are Thales Ground Master 200 multi-mission radars, and the command vehicles come from Iveco.

In September, Kongsberg signed a contract worth about €918 million ($1.02 billion) with the Dutch procurement agency, which is buying NASAMS on Belgium’s behalf, The Brussels Times reported. Belgium will lease a NASAMS system from 2027 to build an initial capability while it waits for its own. The purchase follows the government’s earlier decision to buy 10 NASAMS air defense systems.

Francken tied the move to the drone threat on NATO’s eastern flank, where he said countries such as Poland, Latvia, Romania, Estonia and Lithuania see their airspace violated by missiles or drones every week. He pointed to the sensitive sites Belgium hosts, from the headquarters of NATO and the European Union to the financial firms Euroclear and Swift and the ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge.

The squadron will be based at Beauvechain air base for now and will move to Ursel in East Flanders by 2032 at the latest. Francken said anti-ballistic missile protection will follow at a later stage. Belgium has not yet chosen a long-range system, with the U.S. Patriot and the Franco-Italian SAMP/T both under consideration.

The 51st Squadron expects to receive its first NASAMS systems at the end of next year.