Belgian Air Force

In achieving the RAF rank of squadron leader.

Returning to the Belgian Air Force in 1946, Van Lierde was made d- uh, deputy chief of staff in the Ministry of Defence in 1954, and in 1958 he became the first Bel- or first Belgian to break the sound barrier while test flying the Hawk Hunter at Duxford, uh, Air- Airdrome in England.

He went on to hold several important command positions before retiring in 1968.

So this is the credibility of this man.

So Van Lierde was born of o- oh gosh, over Borla, Belgium, on August 14th, 1915.

Early career and outbreak of the war.

Van Lierde entered the aviation military Belgia, which is the Belgian Military Aviation, the predecessor to the Belgian Air Force.

He was trained as an observer, but began pilot training on May 1st of 1937.

That's a very interesting observation.

And one of the things I heard from General de Brouwer, the Belgian Air Force general who talked about similar objects, and that was like late 80s, very early 90s.

It was a period of time where there was all these incursions.

And he said...

Over the next five months, about 2,000 Belgians saw black triangles.

In the following spring, the Belgian Air Force scrambled F-16s after one of them.

A study in 2004 found that reports of black triangles rose sharply through the 1990s, mostly near cities and interstates, brightly lit and low, as if they wanted to be seen.

Barely a year after one of the most famous secret aircraft in history was unveiled as a black angular machine, the sky filled with black angular machines.

They were studying us, taking their sweet time, acting like we couldn't do a darn thing to stop them.

And, as the Belgian Air Force soon found out, they couldn't.

The climax of this ghost story came on the night of March 30, 1990.

The ground radar stations at Glons and Simrezek picked up an anomalous target.

Headline, Belgium assumes air defence mission in Iceland, marking NATO's new air power posture.

The Belgian Air Force formally assumed the Icelandic air defence responsibilities at Keflavik Air Base, outside the capital of Reykjavik, on August 17, 2026, bolstering NATO's enhanced vigilance activity Arctic Sentry.

The Belgian detachment includes deployed personnel and F-16 Fighting Falcons.

The detachment arrived in Iceland on August 7 and will remain for a month-long deployment.

In a larger sense, following the recent deployment in Lithuania, Estonia, and Romania early this August, this deployment marks NATO Allied Air Command's new unified approach to air defence.

Under the Integrated Air and Missile Defence Framework, air policing will be subsumed under NATO's comprehensive air defence posture.

German Major General Frank Grafe, Chief of Staff for NATO Allied Air Command, said, The Belgian Air Force's assumption of this vital mission in Iceland marks a significant move to a single integrated air and missile defence posture.

Allied Air Command continues to strengthen NATO's air defence umbrella with a multi-layered, 360-degree approach involving assets and capabilities across all operational domains, to address emerging and future threats, whether crewed or uncrewed, aircraft or other.

They were studying us, taking their sweet time, acting like we couldn't do a darn thing to stop them.

And, as the Belgian Air Force soon found out, they couldn't.

The climax of this ghost story came on the night of March 30, 1990.

The ground radar stations at Glons and Semmerzake picked up an anomalous target.

609 is full of Belgians,

isn't it? 609 is essentially the unofficial national squadron of the Belgian Air Force.

609 is where Baron Jean de Sales, Longchamp, ends up, the guy who shoots up the SIPO SD headquarters in Brussels, famously in his typhoon.

You get guys like Cheval Lallemant, who basically is just badass typhoon pilot.