The Belgian UFO Wave (1989-1991)

Because most of the classic UFO cases come from the United States, we are used to seeing witnesses come up against the brick wall of government secrecy in their search for explanations. The wave of sightings over Belgium in the late 80s and early 90s offers a striking contrast to this pattern. Foreign authorities cooperated with witnesses and civilian research groups to investigate the string of unusual phenomena, and in the end, an Air Force study concluded the craft of unknown origin were indeed violating Belgian airspace.

S. and elsewhere. The Belgian UFO wave began in the summer of 1989 and picked up in the fall.

m. on November 29, two federal police officers driving down a highway in the municipality of Upen, a few kilometers from the German border, pursued a flying lighted object in their cruiser. Officers Heinrich Nicole and Hubert von Montigny first noticed the object as it illuminated a nearby field.

The object appeared to be triangular, about 30 meters long on all sides, with beams of light emanating downwards from all three corners, and a flashing red light in the center. It was perfectly silent. The object eventually turned towards Upen, drifted over top of the city, then remained in place for approximately half an hour.

It then moved over nearby Lake Gillep, where it hovered for roughly an hour. Nicole and von Montigny watched as the object emitted two beams of red light, with glowing red balls at the ends of them. The beams slowed as they extended downwards, then eventually stopped, disappeared, and left the two red balls of light to float back up and rejoin the craft.

This sequence of events repeated several times. In 645, a second triangular object suddenly appeared from behind the trees of a nearby forest. Its foremost point was tilted to the ground, exposing a dome with lighted rectangular windows on the upper surface of the craft.

The object immediately flew away towards the north, and the first craft moved off to the southwest some 40 minutes later. Guided by multiple civilian reports, the officers spotted the object again that night as it moved north from Upen and over the village of Henri Chappelle. Two other officers also witnessed the object, which hovered around 75 meters off the ground, while emitting a hissing sound that dimmed the intensity of its lights.

At this time, a red ball of light dropped from the center of the craft before turning off on a horizontal path and disappearing behind the nearby trees. The craft then drifted over the officer's cruiser and headed northwest. The Belgian air staff received a total of 143 sighting reports that night.

At least 13 of the witnesses were police officers, who saw the same or different UFOs at 8 different locations around Upen. Air Force officers reasoned that since only 1 in 10 UFO witnesses ever bothered to report their encounter, there were likely more than 1500 sightings that night alone. The night of November 29th was the most intense period of activity, but more sightings occurred in the following weeks.

There were four observations on December 1st, and 21 witnesses to similar triangular craft on December 11th. On this second night, a family watched one of these craft drift over top of their home. One of the children made drawings of the craft as seen from three different angles as it moved overhead.

The changing profile of the object as it changed positions relative to the observer helps to account for some of the variety of objects in witnesses' reports. Shortly after the family's sightings, Lieutenant Colonel André Amand, a civil engineer in the Belgian Army, spotted a UFO with his wife as they were driving through the countryside. Although it appeared at first as three lighted panels floating over top of a pulsating red light, after Amand stopped the car to get a better look, it reappeared as a large bright spotlight that approached the couple to within 100 meters.

Before Amand climbed back into his seat, the craft turned away and three other lights appeared on its underside, forming a triangle around a pulsating red light. The object then sped away at an alarming rate and disappeared in the night sky. At no point did either witness see a supporting mass behind the lights.

On April 4th, 1990, a couple in the town of Petit-Rachin managed to photograph a triangular craft hovering near their home. The now famous photo was sent for analysis at both the French National Space Research Centre, CNES, and the Belgian Military Academy. Here it was discovered that a triangular shape was visible beneath the lights when the picture was overexposed, and a more recent analysis showed a halo of light surrounding the craft, one that shone in such a way as to indicate the presence of a magnetic field.

Neither analysis found any evidence of tampering with the slide. There were eight more reports of UFO activity on the night of April 22nd, one of which involved a huge trapezoidal platform measuring 60 to 90 meters in each direction. The two witnesses said that there were structures protruding from the underside of the craft, so that it looked like an upside-down aircraft carrier.

A similar craft was observed in March the next year. On July 26th, 1990, a couple driving through the municipality of Grasse-Holland saw a hovering triangular craft with lighted white strips along two of its edges. There were spotlights beaming down from each of the corners, and a red and a green light flashed in the middle.

Mr. H, as he identified himself, flashed his headlights twice, just to see if the craft would respond. Immediately, the two white lights at the base of the triangle pointed towards their car, then flashed off and on again three times in a row.

The object approached to within a hundred meters of the couple, and followed them as they continued their drive, keeping a constant pace with the vehicle, and a consistent distance from the sloping ground. The couple grew increasingly uneasy until the object sped away in the direction of Grasse-Holland. Between 1989 and 1991, there were approximately 2,000 reports of UFO activity over Belgium.

The sheer number of reports prompted the Air Force to take an active interest in determining the origin of the mysterious craft, as they believed was their duty to the public. Major General Wilfried de Brouet, Chief of Operations of the Air Staff of the Belgian Air Force, took charge of investigating the reports. He has spoken openly and confidently about the evidence he collected with the help of a civilian research group called SOPEPs.

Of the 650 reports that the Air Force helped to investigate, 500 could not be explained. de Brouet's team concluded that there were air activities of unknown origin in the airspace of Belgium that could not be attributed to any known aircraft. The true identity of the visitors, however, remained unknown, as no military aircraft were able to establish visual contact with the elusive craft.

However, one F-16 that was scrambled to respond to an anomalous radar return managed to record radar data of some extremely unusual maneuvers on the part of the target. de Brouet has since called for a more objective and better coordinated investigation of the UFO phenomenon. In 2007, he gave a talk to this effect at an international press conference organized by investigative journalist Leslie Kane and filmmaker James Fox, where many high-profile government and military officials lobbied for greater government accountability in UFO research.

The Belgian UFO wave was met with the same kind of incredulous skepticism that popular debunkers bring to most cases of alleged UFO contact. Debunkers have suggested that witnesses saw helicopters, despite the fact that many reported maneuvers were well beyond the performance capabilities of any known aircraft, and despite the fact that the UFOs were almost always reported as being completely or nearly silent. Debunkers have also suggested that the people of Belgium were seeing American test craft, despite the illogical nature of such a scenario and the admission on the part of American intelligence officials that there were no military test flights in the area.

The Belgian UFO wave is notable for being one of several instances of repeated, widely corroborated sightings clustered in a single area. Although it did not span as great a time as the Hudson Valley sightings in New York and Connecticut that began in the early 1980s, the Belgian wave received much greater attention and resources from government and military authorities. The open and unpresumptuous response from the Air Force proves that the public can handle the thought of unknown intruders in the atmosphere and provides less transparent governments elsewhere in the world with an example to follow in their own UFO investigations.

As Dubrouet has said, we must all be prepared for the next UFO wave, wherever it may occur.