Last week, the Belgian armed forces breathed a collective sigh of relief as four brand-new F-35 fighter jets lined up at Florennes Air Base seven years after they were ordered.
But the government has admitted that there is a problem with the new planes: Belgium’s airspace is too small for pilots to train in them.
Defence Minister Theo Francken said in a House committee hearing last week that Belgian airspace “will not be sufficient to accommodate training missions” using the new jets.
He explained that Belgium had entered into discussions with allies including including the Netherlands, Italy and Norway to enable Belgian pilots to train in their airspace. Since early 2025, Belgium has been operating eight F-35s from Luke Air Base, Arizona, where pilots have undergone training on how to fly the aircraft.
To defence analysts, the revelation that Belgium's skies are too small for training purposes was not particularly surprising. Due to the narrowness of its airspace, Belgium encountered similar problems with its old F-16 fighter jets.
However, this detail didn’t stop the French press from engaging in some not-so-gentle teasing over Belgium’s predicament.
French broadcaster BFMTV said it “sounded like a bad Belgian joke”, while Armées.com called it a “Belgian debacle”.
A long-running diplomatic dispute
Belgium’s decision to buy US-made F-35s rather than a European equivalent has been a huge bone of contention between Belgium and France in recent years.
Arguments over the rights and wrongs of procuring US-made defence equipment have rumbled on for years as Belgium has sought to replace its ageing stock of F-16 fighters, which date from the 1980s.
Belgium currently possesses 45 F-16s, and has committed to give 30 of the older fighter jets to Ukraine from 2026.
In July, Francken set out the government’s Strategic Defence Plan for 2026-34, revealing that Belgium would buy a further 11 F-35 fighter jets to add to the 34 it had already purchased from Lockheed Martin at a cost of €4.5 billion.
Senior representatives of the French defence industry did little to hide their displeasure over the announcement. They would have preferred Belgium to buy the French-made Rafale fighter jets instead.
An article on French defence website Forum Militaire delivered a blistering attack on Belgium’s decision to “sign a cheque to Washington”.
The article, which made reference to Belgium’s “betrayal” of France said: “How can we justify the purchase of a closed American aircraft, designed outside any European logic? For many observers, it's a major paradox: Belgium is defending the rhetoric of a European defence, while reinforcing its dependence on NATO.”
