The last time Brussels was so twitchy about imaginary objects in the sky, it at least had the decency to blame aliens
Looks like the aliens might be back to mess with Belgium again. And this time, apparently, they’re Russian. “E.T. call Motherland.”
Perhaps this is the extraterrestrials’ version of Netflix. They sit around on the couch going, “When does the next season of that show with those bumbling goofs in Europe trying to chase us come out?” Maybe 35 years on Earth is like a month in alien time, because the sequel to the Belgian UFO Wave of 1989/1990 appears to have just kicked off.
But this time, it’s not a comedy or a mystery, but a drama. Well, for those in charge it is. For some of us, it’s just the usual Eurobozo burlesque with a different backdrop.
EU leaders have had it in their heads for a while now that if a mysterious object is hovering over Europe, it’s probably Putin. Or someone from his advance team. They’re expecting him in Western Europe by 2030, don’t you know. Mark your calendars. And this is why they need Europeans to loosen their fists and release whatever remaining cash they’ve neglected to remove from your possession. Because they need to buy weapons to shoot him down before he lands on a Starbucks patio.
If Belgian officials can be believed, that landing is virtually imminent now. Because Putin has chosen their country to wage “hybrid warfare,” they say. With drones. And they’re shutting down airports because of it.
Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken says that they could be spy drones trying to peep on American nuclear weapons at Belgium’s Kleine Brogel Air Base, talking like they’ve just walked in on America showering. That would explain why they loiter around airports too, I guess, because nothing screams “covert intelligence operation” quite like getting caught hovering over the airport and blocking European air traffic.
A meeting of the country’s National Security Council was urgently convened this week, according to Le Monde, and aimed to “present an outline of a plan to reassure the public, which is becoming increasingly aware of the country’s lack of preparation for this kind of threat.”
Pretty sure the Belgian public already knew that you guys were a hot mess 35 years ago. They spent months staring at UFOs in Belgian skies, and when you sent up a couple of F-16s to get a closer look and shoot them down with your ‘advanced radar’ systems, one of your jets just ended up locking on to shoot the other one.
Still, the Belgian government at the time didn’t go so far as to argue that this potentially disastrous act of self-owning was proof that the aliens were messing with the radar. Maybe because they would have sounded stupid. Instead, in the absence of definitive and scientifically credible answers, they let the public enjoy the speculation.
But since everyone in the EU has to be treated like an infant these days, here come the Belgian authorities with their ‘public reassurance’ plan. Last time this happened, you literally let the public think that they were hallucinating en masse because you couldn’t prove otherwise. No speculating, no instrumentalizing the event to toss blame at a convenient political target.
This time, the Belgian interior minister loudly proclaims that the drones “will be destroyed whenever necessary and possible” by the military – which apparently still needs to figure out a protocol. We’ve seen this movie before, guys. It ends like Top Gun – if Maverick were Belgian and had nearly downed Goose’s plane himself.
Last time this kind of hysteria happened it was at the very height of the final transformative stage of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West, yet there were no major accusations flying that Russia was responsible for UFOs. Maybe because everyone had already blown enough cash on weapons. But these days, it’s never enough. Which would explain why the Belgian defense minister is already leveraging the drone incidents to “accelerate the creation of a ‘national air security center,’” according to Le Monde, including the “purchase of detection, jamming and drone destruction systems.”
This is the same well-adjusted fellow who recently sounded like he partook in a bit too much “maple syrup” at the Belgian waffle house and claimed that NATO “will flatten Moscow” if it ever attacked. Speaking of Putin, he said: “He knows that, ‘If I use nuclear weapons, they will wipe Moscow off the face of the Earth. Then the end of the world will be near,’” according to Belgian news outlet HUMO a few days ago. After which he may or may not have belched and zigzagged home like the street was on a slope.
Another reason the European authorities may not have blamed the Soviets for the UFOs back in the day is because – hear me out – they didn’t have any actual evidence that it was specifically them. And that was a much different situation because nowadays, the EU has all the technology required to see into the cockpit of the drone and determine that it’s piloted by a tiny little Russian pilot with an affinity for the sport mode switch and careening through the clouds above Belgian airports like it’s viral dashcam video-worthy.
“Leads are converging in the direction” of Moscow, unnamed “intelligence officials” told Le Monde, which Moscow vehemently denies.
Look, whatever the case, whoever or whatever is screwing with Belgium needs to knock it off. Because there’s a casting problem. Putting today’s Belgian officials at the center of this is like watching a comedy starring Joaquin Phoenix or Daniel Day-Lewis looking intensely at the camera while surrounded by banana peels.
In the meantime, somewhere over Belgium, the tiny Russian drone pilot salutes the aliens he met at cosmonaut school. “Ready for another season?” he says, as the Belgians below look up and wonder if Putin’s aerial convoy has exclusively chosen them, of all creatures on Earth, to grace them with its presence.
