Locals warned as Belgian military copters to take to Moray skies - here's when you can spot them
Kinloss Barracks in Moray will host helicopters from the Belgian Armed Forces later this week it has been confirmed.
They will arrive at the base on Friday and will stay until May 20.
During this period, they will be involved in night flying, which may cause a 'slight disruption' to locals.
Aircrews have been briefed to avoid low-level flying over built-up areas and to avoid disrupting birds roosting on Findhorn Bay. The Belgian military arrived at Kinloss Barracks at the weekend. Image: David Hendry. Belgian military helicopters above Moray
A founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Belgian military is in the north of Scotland for training exercises.
On Saturday, large convoys of Belgian Armed Forces vehicles were spotted entering Kinloss Barracks. The site was an RAF base until 2012.
Earlier this week, The Press and Journal revealed an exercise was being conducted by the country's Special Operations Regiment, which is part of Belgium's army (Land Component). The Belgian military on their way to Kinloss. Image: David Hendry.
Belgium's Ministry of Defence confirmed they are taking part in a large-scale operation in the UK, which is part of military exercise called Red Condor, with 600 personnel taking part.
This is being conducted by the 3rd Parachute Battalion, which is part of the Special Operations Regiment of the Belgian Armed Forces, with support from the Belgian Air Component, the country's equivalent of the RAF.
Read more: Just what was a fleet of Belgian army vehicles doing in Kinloss?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
6 hours ago
- Telegraph
The British military base preparing for war in space
In a fake village in Buckinghamshire, several members of Space Command are huddled around a computer screen watching a foreign missile approach to a Ministry of Defence communications satellite. It is just an exercise, but it is a scenario that is increasingly worrying military chiefs, who fear space is now the most important theatre of war. Modern life is largely space-based, with satellites controlling everything from EasyJet flight plans to Amazon deliveries and army advances. Taking out satellites would cripple society. Russia took down the country's satellite communications just hours before it began the land invasion. China and Russia have also both tested anti-satellite missiles, while Moscow is allegedly developing a programme to arm some of its satellites with nuclear warheads, meaning it could destroy enemy networks while in orbit. In recognition of this new orbital battlefield, Space Command was established at RAF High Wycombe in 2021, to 'protect and defend' UK interests in space, and is now home to the UK Space Operations Centre, which was officially opened by government ministers this week. The RAF base is the former headquarters of Bomber Command, a military unit responsible for strategic bombing during the Second World War. With its winding streets, faux church towers and manor house office blocks, was designed to look like a quintessential Home Counties village, should the Luftwaffe be passing over. The Bomber Command logo 'Strike Hard, Strike Sure' has been replaced with Space Command's 'Ad Stellas Usque' – Latin for 'up to the stars'. Where Bomber Harris's team had its eyes fixed firmly on the ground, Space Command's gaze is now turned skywards. Maria Eagle, minister for defence procurement, who helped open the operations centre this week, said: 'From a national security point of view, space is a contested and congested and competitive domain, and we need to make sure, as our adversaries advance their capabilities, that we're able to deal with what that throws up.' She added: 'It's an extension of the more earthbound worries that we've got. The usual kind of things that you worry about on Earth, it's just extended upwards, because that's now a domain that is as important as land, sea or air to the potential of war-fighting or defending national security. 'The National Space Operations Centre does vital work in monitoring and protecting our interests. It's a recognition of the fact that our adversaries are active there, and we need to know what's going on.' Although the United States performed the first anti-satellite tests in 1959, space warfare has largely been consigned to Hollywood and science fiction until recently. Fears began to ramp up in January 2007, when China shot down one of its own ageing weather satellites with a ballistic missile creating a cloud of space junk, which is still causing problems. In November 2021, Russia conducted its own direct-ascent anti-satellite test, destroying the Soviet intelligence satellite Kosmos-1408, and generating a debris field that forced astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter. However it is not just anti-satellite missiles that are causing concern. According to the latest Space Threat Assessment, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, nations are developing evermore elaborate space weapons. These weapons include electro-magnetic pulses, microwaves and lasers to fry electronics, dazzlers to blind optical sensors, and grapplers to latch on to satellites and pull them out of orbit. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all have the capability of jamming and hijacking satellite signals and launching cyber attacks. A 10-second delay in Google Chrome loading may seem like a domestic internet glitch, but bad actors could also be behind it, Space Command has warned. 'Counter-space arsenal' Space Command is particularly worried about China, which in the past year has launched increasingly advanced and highly-manoeuvrable satellites for purposes that remain unclear. CSIS believes Beijing may be creating a ' formidable on-orbit counter-space arsenal ' and that manoeuvrability testing is allowing Chinese operators to develop 'tactics and procedures that can be used for space war-fighting'. US Space force commanders have also warned that Chinese satellites have been spotted 'dogfighting' in space, moving within less than a mile of each other. 'China continues to develop and field a broad set of counter-space capabilities,' a member of Space Command told The Telegraph. 'It's certainly one of the more capable adversaries. Space is no longer a sanctuary, it's a space of contest. It's the modern battlefield.' Russia's Luch satellites have also been spotted stalking European communications and broadcast satellites, moving close to their orbits for reasons not fully understood. Space Command fears they are probing the systems to find out how best to disrupt signals. Although Russia continues to deny it is developing an orbital nuclear anti-satellite weapon – which would breach the 1967 Outer Space Treaty – US intelligence suggests otherwise. Chris Bryant, minister of state for data protection and telecoms, said: 'There's a lot of stuff up there now … and the risks from deliberate bad actors, in particular from Russia and China, and the havoc that could be created either deliberately or accidentally, is quite significant. 'So we need to monitor as closely as we possibly can, 24/7, everything that is going on up there so that we can avert accidental damage, and we can also potentially deter other more deliberate, harmful activity.' Space Command currently employs more than 600 staff, roughly 70 per cent of whom are from the Royal Air Force with the remaining 30 per cent from the Army and Navy, plus a handful of civilians. Not only is it monitoring the sky for threats from foreign powers but it is also keeping an eye out for falling space debris, asteroids, and coronal mass ejections from the Sun which could wipe out power grids and satellites. When a threat is spotted, the team can contact satellite providers to warn them to reposition their spacecraft, or advise them to power down until a powerful jet of plasma has passed through. It also informs the government and the security services on the orbital movements of foreign powers. Space Command also launched its first military satellite last year, named Tyche, which can capture daytime images and videos of the Earth's surface for surveillance, intelligence gathering and military operations. It is part of the Government's £968 million Istari programme which will see more satellites launched by 2031 to create a surveillance constellation. Mr Bryant added: 'Lots of people think 'space' and joke about Star Trek and the final frontier, but actually the truth is you couldn't spend a single day of your life these days in the UK without some kind of engagement with space. 'The havoc that could be created, which might be military havoc, or it might be entirely civil havoc, could be very significant.'
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Why is a Guernsey field being surveyed for undetonated bombs?
A field in Guernsey is to be surveyed later after suspicions were raised there could be undetonated World War Two bombs lurking deep beneath the in June 1940, the Channel Islands were the only British territories to be occupied by the Germans during the war. A contractor will be inspecting fields next to Route Isabelle, in St Peter Port, in the east of the island, after islanders raised concerns a previous survey had not looked deep enough for bombs. Wartime flight paths and military records point to unexploded ordnance potentially lying beneath the field, said bomb disposal expert Ben Remfrey, who ramped up pressure on the issue in October last former soldier said the most likely reason he believed there were bombs in the Foulon Farm area because of an event on 3 March 1941, when the RAF sent squadrons from airfields in the south of England to bomb the French port of Brest, which was in German hands. "The target was the German battleship, the Admiral Hipper, which was in dry dock," he said."It was a cloudy wet night and a number of the bombers could not identify the target and some were damaged by anti-aircraft fire." He said a few planes flew back to base and those that still had their payload onboard had to jettison, or throw out, the bombs due to them being unstable to land with."The jettison area was thought to be the Hurd Deep, north of Guernsey, and the route from Brest back to southern England passed over Guernsey in some instances," he said. What do authorities say? In 2018, the States of Guernsey was made aware of the potential existence of these unexploded aircraft-dropped bombs near Route Isabelle.A year later, a private specialist company was commissioned by the States to survey the land but no evidence was ever found of any October 2024 Guernsey Police said there was "no strong evidence that these devices exist" and officials had "already conducted precautionary work to ensure the risk to the community is minimal".In February 2025 Dave Le Ray, director of operations for Justice and Regulation, said "specialist advice" indicated the risk was "low" but the States had decided to "commission a deep survey" following concerns raised by residents and Mr Remfrey. How common is it to find WW2 ordnance? Mr Remfrey said live ordnances from World War Two continued to be found around the globe and it was important to make them safe."For one reason or another, a good deal of ordnance fails to function as designed when dropped - over time, the fusing mechanisms 'let go' and the bombs then detonate," he said."The perception is that these bombs, after 84 years, are rusty and unlikely to detonate is utterly unfounded." He said ordnance of "varying diameter" was found regularly in the Channel Islands, with most of it dealt by the police bomb disposal of a roll bomb found on Guernsey's south coast was detonated last October, and the bottom of the cliffs in the same area were closed off as a bomb was detonated in unexploded WW2 bomb was found and detonated on Jersey's east coast last Remfrey said air dropped weapons were "generally buried out of site" and that they could remain in "near perfect condition".He said if bombs were found, the Ministry of Defence would excavate and assess the ordnance, with safety cordons and evacuation options put in place.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
D-Day tribute sculpture unveiled at former RAF Harwell airbase
A memorial sculpture which commemorates servicemen who played a crucial role in the D-Day landings has been unveiled at a former RAF base. The sculpture was inspired by the wooden Horsa gliders, an aircraft which delivered troops and equipment behind enemy lines during World War Two. It was unveiled at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, the former site of RAF Harwell, where the glider unit was took off from the base on the night before D-Day as part of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on 6 June 1944. The sculpture honours the 6th Airborne Division, the No. 38 Group RAF, and the Glider Pilot Regiment. The division played a crucial role in the D-Day landings, carrying servicemen including members of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry to Normandy. Those forces were involved in quickly securing Pegasus Bridge, near Caen, which protected the eastern flank of the D-Day landing zone. The central form of the sculpture was designed to echo the glider's fuselage, which could hold up to 28 servicemen. It's estimated that 3,800 Horsa gliders were built during the Second World War, constructed almost entirely from 3-ply timber, mainly in furniture 6th Airborne Division remained on the front line for 82 days. They suffered 4,457 casualties - 821 killed, 2,709 wounded, and 927 missing. Sculptor Charlotte Holmes said: "Their bravery and the inevitability faced by those involved is just breathtaking."What struck me... was that because it's a glider with no engine, there is no turning back.""It was an honour to commemorate the men who took off from Harwell 81 years ago."Major James Sibbald, from the Royal British Legion, said the sculpture was a fitting tribute to the servicemen from the glider regiment. "RAF Harwell is still here in the heart of the Harwell campus," he said. [The sculpture] is vital to show the commitment that our forces had and the memory of their actions". You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
