Belgian UAP wave begins

Hundreds of witnesses across Belgium, including dozens of national and federal police officers, report large, silent, triangular craft moving at low altitude over the country. The Belgian Air Force scrambles F-16s on 30–31 March 1990 and obtains a brief radar lock that is later attributed to anomalous propagation.

Beginning the night of 29 November 1989, citizens in eastern Belgium reported large, silent, triangular craft with bright lights at the corners moving slowly over urban and rural areas. Over the following months, hundreds of additional reports were collected by the Belgian Société Belge d'Étude des Phénomènes Spatiaux (SOBEPS) in coordination with the Belgian gendarmerie.

On the night of 30–31 March 1990, the Belgian Air Force scrambled two F-16s after radar contact at multiple sites, including the Glons CRC and Semmerzake. The F-16 pilots reported brief radar locks that broke when the targets executed extreme accelerations. The Belgian Ministry of Defence subsequently held a press conference acknowledging the radar contact and released the case file. A 2011 review by Maj. Gen. Wilfried De Brouwer, who had directed the original Air Force investigation, characterized portions of the radar data as 'consistent with anomalous propagation' but noted that visual reports remained unexplained.

Primary sourceBelgian Air Component press materials (1990, 2011)