Action taken against alleged drones over Volkel air base (the Netherlands)

wdejager

Member
Dutch Ministry of Defence Statement posted this statement today on their website (translated):

Defence took action on Friday evening after several drones were reportedly seen over Volkel Air Base between 19:00 and 21:00. The drones were observed by security personnel. Air Force personnel deployed weapons from the ground in an attempt to bring the drones down. The drones left the area and were not recovered.

After the report, the Royal Marechaussee and the police were notified. They are conducting further investigation. At this time, it is unclear why the drones were flying over or around the airbase. For security reasons, Defence is not providing additional information about how the drones were detected or which countermeasures were used.

Context / Notes

There is still very little clarity about what exactly happened. The Ministry did not specify how the objects were detected (visually or via sensors), nor what type of weapons were used (kinetic or non-kinetic). Since the incident took place in the dark, the nature of the observations is especially uncertain.

Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans later said (source):

"In total, it lasted two hours. But that doesn't mean the drones were flying over the airbase for the entire two hours. Our current understanding is that five drones were first observed, and at a later moment that number had increased to ten. However, it was dark and visibility was poor. We have not yet been able to determine what type of drones they were. We are investigating this and hope to gain more clarity."

Around 20:00, a HEMS helicopter was flying in the area,

Source: https://x.com/StijnOerde/status/1992219636524281916?s=19

but the Ministry has ruled out that it was mistaken for a drone or drones.

A relevant comparison is the incident at Camp Borris (Denmark) on 28 September, where soldiers reportedly fired at a suspected drone (source). Subsequent analysis by @ThomasH suggested that the "drone" may in fact have been an overflying passenger aircraft.

For now, the key question is what other air traffic was in the vicinity of Volkel that evening. Further verification is needed before any conclusions can be drawn.
 
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For "drones" see Starlink, stars, helicopter navigation lights or anything else! A journalist needs to ask for a description, no one should be shooting at a drone unless it's close enough to see what it is and if it's a threat.
 
Perhaps 19:00 local is probably the time to focus on, looking for the initiating event, we've seen that once a flap starts it can continue as more people looking continue to misinterpret what they are seeing.
 
Perhaps 19:00 local is probably the time to focus on, looking for the initiating event, we've seen that once a flap starts it can continue as more people looking continue to misinterpret what they are seeing.
Correct "the drones were spotted by security personnel between 7:00 PM (19:00) and 9:00 PM (21:00)"
 
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Very busy airspace. Here's all the planes that flew nearby between 1800 and 1900 UTC (1900 and 2000 local CET)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX9co7e4pHE


Oncoming planes, especially the larger ones, can be visible for many miles away. Certainly 50, sometimes 100

The sim is at 60x. Many of the planes would appear to be hovering.

We can't rule out drones, but really, they need to demonstrate how they ruled out planes.
 
Very busy airspace. Here's all the planes that flew nearby between 1800 and 1900 UTC (1900 and 2000 local CET)

We can't rule out drones, but really, they need to demonstrate how they ruled out planes.
I'm glad you did this, my head was spinning trying to think if the original helicopter idea stands, which it can't do as that's 20:00 UTC which would be 21:00 so your analysis at 18:00 hours would be 19:00 in the Netherlands, so will be correct...
 
Very busy airspace. Here's all the planes that flew nearby between 1800 and 1900 UTC (1900 and 2000 local CET)


Oncoming planes, especially the larger ones, can be visible for many miles away. Certainly 50, sometimes 100

The sim is at 60x. Many of the planes would appear to be hovering.

We can't rule out drones, but really, they need to demonstrate how they ruled out planes.
100% sure we will never see/hear of any evidence..

Our extremely competent (*cough*) minister of defence, Mr Brekelmans, says they were surely drones, so why doubt it? Of course I am being sarcastic here.
 
The departement of defense already said there was a trauma helicopter at the base. And that they ruled out that it was the helicopter. So according to the DoD it wasnt their helicopter.
 
A mere 24 hours after drones were allegedly spotted at Volkel Air Base, Eindhoven airport (which is about 30 km away from Volkel) has been disrupted after sightings of 'multiple drones.

Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans just tweeted:

Several drones have been observed near Eindhoven Airport.

As a result, civilian and military air traffic has been suspended. Defence counter-drone assets are on standby to intervene. Police and the Royal Marechaussee are also on site.

Further investigation is ongoing, and we will take action wherever necessary.
 
Aaaaand we have another one, again in the Netherlands:

https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/637690...hoven-airport-vliegverkeer-is-stilgelegd.html

External Quote:


Multiple drones spotted at Eindhoven Airport, air traffic has been halted

By our news editors

22 Nov 2025 at 21:07Update: 15 minutes ago

Several drones have been spotted near Eindhoven Airport. As a result, air traffic to and from Eindhoven has been halted, caretaker Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans reported on X . Eindhoven Airport is not only an airport, but also houses an air base on its grounds. Therefore, both civil and military air traffic have been suspended. According to the minister, "counter-drone assets from the Ministry of Defence" are ready to intervene, and police and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are on site. "Further investigation is ongoing, and we will take action where necessary," Brekelmans added.
A spokesperson for Eindhoven Airport confirms that no flights are currently departing or landing at the airport. According to the airport's website, planes scheduled to land in Eindhoven are being diverted to Brussels, Rotterdam, and Weeze (Germany). A flight from Eindhoven to Porto has also been delayed.
Signs at the airport reportedly stated: "Due to airspace disruptions, flights are delayed and cancellations may follow," Omroep Brabant reported.
Earlier on Saturday, it was reported that five to ten drones were sighted Friday evening over Volkel Air Force Base, approximately 30 kilometers from Eindhoven Airport. Air Force personnel attempted to shoot down the drones from the ground with weapons, but were unsuccessful. The objects flew away and have not been recovered since.
 
Aaaaand we have another one, again in the Netherlands:

https://www.nu.nl/binnenland/637690...hoven-airport-vliegverkeer-is-stilgelegd.html

External Quote:


Multiple drones spotted at Eindhoven Airport, air traffic has been halted

By our news editors

22 Nov 2025 at 21:07Update: 15 minutes ago

Several drones have been spotted near Eindhoven Airport. As a result, air traffic to and from Eindhoven has been halted, caretaker Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans reported on X . Eindhoven Airport is not only an airport, but also houses an air base on its grounds. Therefore, both civil and military air traffic have been suspended. According to the minister, "counter-drone assets from the Ministry of Defence" are ready to intervene, and police and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are on site. "Further investigation is ongoing, and we will take action where necessary," Brekelmans added.
A spokesperson for Eindhoven Airport confirms that no flights are currently departing or landing at the airport. According to the airport's website, planes scheduled to land in Eindhoven are being diverted to Brussels, Rotterdam, and Weeze (Germany). A flight from Eindhoven to Porto has also been delayed.
Signs at the airport reportedly stated: "Due to airspace disruptions, flights are delayed and cancellations may follow," Omroep Brabant reported.
Earlier on Saturday, it was reported that five to ten drones were sighted Friday evening over Volkel Air Force Base, approximately 30 kilometers from Eindhoven Airport. Air Force personnel attempted to shoot down the drones from the ground with weapons, but were unsuccessful. The objects flew away and have not been recovered since.
Does someone know what's UN or NATO stance on the probability of huge incompetence from the part of Netherlands' Department of Defense on this issue?
 
Eindhoven has ATC recordings on Live ATC. It's late here and I'm out all day tomorrow, perhaps someone could download the relevant files.

https://www.liveatc.net/archive.php?m=eheh7_twr1
This feed^ appears to be completely dead air from 1800-2400. Maybe that receiver is broken.

I am looking at the ground 3 feed (frequency 121.930)
https://www.liveatc.net/archive.php?m=eheh7_gnd

I downloaded starting at 1800 again but right at 1800Z they are already discussing the airport being closed due to drones. For the ground feed the first time I see drones mentioned is about 17:40Z, but it's when a pilot asks about the airport being closed. So it was already closed, due to some drone sighting prior to 17:40Z. Ground was talking to a pilot 24min into the 17:00Z recording, so approximately 17:24Z. A note about this is the liveatc.net recordings aren't aligned perfectly to the 00 and 30 minute boundaries so this is approximate (though within a minute or so) unless there is something else that can be used to align it (like the time a plane touched down or crossed a runway or something).

In the transcript it is clear that multiple drones are seen over an extended period of time. And, that they are seen by airport staff, including the person operating the ground radio.

I want to go through the other feeds especially the tower ones to see if there's any other information, but this is something to work with at least. I've concatenated all the .vtt subtitle files generated by whisper large-v2 and attached it as a txt file. I also put each filename ahead of each section so that you have the file it came from and the clock time it approximately starts at. (this does make it not a valid vtt subtitle file anymore).

Some selected lines (other lines interspersed between these are omitted but are in the attached txt file).

(All times are UTC)

From the 1730 file:
11:10.335 --> 11:13.500
We have some drone activities here.

30:37.847 --> 30:42.694
Well, we have some unknown drone activities above and around the airport.

30:43.775 --> 30:48.842
So we're currently checking with some specialized teams about the activities.

From the 1800 file:
03:30.513 --> 03:37.765
Ground, hello again, it's the Ryanair 93ZD, any update to the drone situation?

03:37.785 --> 03:39.027
Unfortunately not, sir.

03:39.327 --> 03:57.297
We spotted four in total at this point, and we have a team around the airport checking, and once they are not observing drones anymore, we have to discuss with the authorities if we can resume activities or not.

12:55.488 --> 13:03.700
What I can tell you is that once they don't spot any drones anymore, we have to wait for at least 15 to 30 minutes.

13:05.082 --> 13:09.309
We just got an observation of four other ones like five minutes ago.

13:10.390 --> 13:13.935
Okay, five minutes ago we had an observation that they don't show up anymore about 30 minutes.

From the 1830 file:
10:45.989 --> 10:55.501
And ground, Ryanair 93ZD, have the drones been spotted in the last 20 minutes or so?

11:02.791 --> 11:05.515
We're currently phoning with the management.

11:05.715 --> 11:10.461
The last observation was about 10 to 15 minutes ago.

12:21.393 --> 12:25.898
I just got a phone call that there's 3 observations 2-3 minutes ago.

28:46.814 --> 28:52.101
Yeah, just for your information, we're still observing drone activity around the airport.

28:57.369 --> 28:59.291
When was the last sighting now?

28:59.311 --> 29:00.192
I'm just looking at one.

29:00.713 --> 29:02.035
Oh, okay.

From the 1900 file:
14:34.960 --> 14:36.706
Any more drones?

14:36.727 --> 14:38.312
Yeah, they're still around, sir.

29:16.066 --> 29:17.590
Ryanair 19C, go ahead.

29:18.071 --> 29:20.797
Yeah, for your information, there's still observation of two drones.

From the 1930 file:
12:31.458 --> 12:36.705
Ground, Ryanair 93ZD, I assume are we still spotting drones in the area?

12:36.786 --> 12:37.851
Affirm sir.

From the 2000 file:
16:56.914 --> 16:58.336
Nothing new, right?

16:58.356 --> 17:05.027
No, we're currently phoning with the drone operations team and as soon as I've got some news I will get back to you.

28:28.207 --> 28:44.320
Yeah, just for information, we got a drone observation again like 2-3 minutes ago, and for your information, after the latest drone observation, we need to have at least 15 to 30 minutes no observations.

28:44.981 --> 28:50.726
After that, we need to do an extensive, sorry, intensive runway inspection.

28:51.226 --> 28:53.248
And after that, we can open the field again.

28:53.617 --> 28:58.226
Okay, that's copied, so you're planning on extending, if needed, the curfew?

28:59.167 --> 29:03.856
Yeah, we're in touch with the management about that.

From the 2030 file:
10:00.539 --> 10:04.485
According to my information, the latest observation was 10 minutes ago.

10:06.628 --> 10:09.913
We're in constant communication with the drone team.

10:10.231 --> 10:15.740
So every 10 minutes we're phoning each other about the latest observations.

10:16.822 --> 10:17.644
Okay, thank you.

10:18.205 --> 10:23.714
So possibly 5 to 15 minutes or so if there's no more sightings that we could possibly start.

10:25.818 --> 10:31.527
After the last observation we need at least a bracket of 15 to 30 minutes of no observations.

10:32.329 --> 10:33.150
Roger, thank you very much.

22:51.850 --> 22:56.745
Alright, 19SQ, do you have an update on the airport situation?

22:57.647 --> 23:00.717
That's negative, latest observation was 5 minutes ago.


From this log, the airport then appeared to resume departures a few minutes after 2130Z.

Ballparking from the estimated times here, drones being seen over the airport happened from ~17:40Z (or slightly earlier), to 20:47Z. This is a remarkable span of time to frequently be seeing drones. I would expect there to be tangible confirmation of there being a drone there, and there to be sensor data and a lot of camera footage. At 18:59Z the controller says they are currently looking at a drone.
 

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Just to add to the picture of the evening of 21-11-25 at Volkel, calls for Lifeliner3 (medical helicopter based at Volkel Airbase) were:

17:34utc Dirksland - canceled, no take off.
17:57utc Volkel - used their car instead of the helicopter due to short distance.
20:02utc Hengelo - take off 20:08utc, canceled 20:11utc over Mill
20:13utc Lent - retask while airborne over Mill, canceled 20:19utc, returned Volkel 20:28utc
21:50utc Oisterwijk - take off 20:57utc, returned Volkel 22:36utc
 
The drone sightings at Eindhoven Airport are among the first cases in which air-traffic control reported visually spotting a drone. A specialized drone response team was operating on the ground at the time, and they reported multiple sightings as well. These are trained professionals who can reliably distinguish between a helicopter, an aircraft, and a drone.
 
This is the only video which was posted on the internet showing what could be a drone. The video was made from someone standing at the apron of Eindhoven airport. This person is working on the airport as he says ' Sierra 2'. Sierra 2 is the name of a parking spot. This is not something a passenger would know. The plane parked is a Ryanair B737-800. EI-HGV was parked at Sierra 2 according FR24. It departed as FR2576 to Malaga at 22:41

The attached image shows the apron chart.
apron Eindhoven .png

The video is here https://www.dumpert.nl/item/100137978_21113240
 
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These are trained professionals who can reliably distinguish between a helicopter, an aircraft, and a drone.

Confidently asserting something as if it is a fact does not make it so. As long as those professionals are human beings they make mistakes just like everybody else. Pilots who have undergone thousands of hours of training have mistaken Venus for an oncoming plane. It is difficult to resolve what you're seeing in the sky especially if it is just a distant point of light. We should be careful bringing in assumptions of infallibility.
 
I think we should be just as careful for a mindset believing there were no drones. Sometimes there is nothing to debunk. The Dutch minister said these were drones anyone can buy at the Mediamarkt electronics shop.
 
The drone sightings at Eindhoven Airport are among the first cases in which air-traffic control reported visually spotting a drone. A specialized drone response team was operating on the ground at the time, and they reported multiple sightings as well. These are trained professionals who can reliably distinguish between a helicopter, an aircraft, and a drone.

If they were professionals they wouldn't be looking with just their eyes. There would be detection gear up, at least thermal scopes in use and some suggestions of the airport dealing with a threat or innocent drone activity.

In an airport environment if you're doing things properly you should be determining not only is a drone there, but is it a drone with an explosive payload or is it just little Timmy filming a long exposure shot for Instagram.

Take Dublin Airport their specialist drone team used to be sending out their firefighters around the airfield for a look.

That video isn't a drone, as usual it looks like a manned aircraft recorded on a camera phone with auto focus on.

The 30 minute shut down process is a standard process, often followed by airports with little or no counter drone hardware. Where a drone/pilot is detected police are generally tasked to arrest the pilot while the airport remains running.

As an example Gatwick and Heathrow get drone detections every week, but they use EO/IR to determine a threat (which uses a degree of vision AI so is not entirely immune from a false positive) along with RF so where that detects the pilot the police get sent to have a word or make an arrest depending on the nature of the flight...
 
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I think we should be just as careful for a mindset believing there were no drones. Sometimes there is nothing to debunk.
The Dutch minister said these were drones anyone can buy at the Mediamarkt electronics shop.
If that were or is so, proof of it would be or will be forthcoming. Of course, the longer the flap goes on, the more opportunity there is for pranksters or irresponsible people to go get a drone and fly it where they shouldn't to "get in on the fun."
 
I think we should be just as careful for a mindset believing there were no drones. Sometimes there is nothing to debunk. The Dutch minister said these were drones anyone can buy at the Mediamarkt electronics shop.
This underlines how ignorant the minister is on drones, as a drone bought in a shop wouldn't be fitted with high powered lighting, drone LEDs at night can only be seen to around 120m, well within range of a mobile phone picking up drone audio... Where strobes are fitted it's usually aftermarket, usually a single, in a single colour.

I did an ChatGPT analysis on the entire ATC recording (it has access to stored datasets on Gatwick & Lakenheath) and the recordings suggest a low probability of legitimate drones.

[EDIT: Deleted Incorrect AI timelines]
 
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Do we have any insight as to the specific procedures being followed by any of the various "drone response teams"?
In the absence of dedicated radar or lidar optimized for small short range drones, the first thing I would do is getting a sighting from a position far enough from the original report to locate the suspect object in at least two dimensions and firmly establish its true distance and direction from the airport.
Thermal, IR, and RF are all direction only sensors. You need at least one other observation from another location to triangulate distance.
 
At night, very hard
The camera suggestion? I'd have to disagree, I can get pictures of the moons of Jupiter or the cluster of stars in the Pleiades with my hand held camera that has a decent zoom lens. Admittedly these are not moving targets, and drones doing evasive maneuvers would be hard to track for a picture. But drones hovering or flying along steadily ought to be possible to catch.

Of course, the idea of getting pictures might be more to show US there are really drones. To establish for THEM that there are or are not really drones, some good binoculars might be easier. This assumes that the crew on the spot looking at this thing wants to find out what they really are, drones or otherwise, which I'd tend to assume
 
I'm a wildlife photographer I have experience, it's hard enough in the day, at night very, very difficult and then you have to have something show up, the moon is huge, steady and lit by the sun.
 
I'm a wildlife photographer I have experience, it's hard enough in the day, at night very, very difficult and then you have to have something show up, the moon is huge, steady and lit by the sun.
Photographers managed at Gatwick (look up Eddie Mitchell). Keep in mind these videos are manned aviation due to the ICAO lighting so it's not like it's really a drone anyway. A decent camera (and operator) would have prevented the G-16 helicopter confusion at Brussels.

It should be added actual large multirotor drones tend to fly fairly slow.

A HUGELY IMPORTANT point, real drones with their inbuilt LEDs would only be visible within around 120m so would be easy to film.
 
I'm a wildlife photographer I have experience, it's hard enough in the day, at night very, very difficult and then you have to have something show up, the moon is huge, steady and lit by the sun.
The moons of Jupiter, somewhat less so. But I'm intrigued by how much harder it might be with a moving target, if the ball game tonight gets boring I might go outside and give it a try...
 
At night with a tiny target which just has flashing lights on it.

The moons of Jupiter are always just hanging out by pretty much the brightest light in the sky and are barely moving from your Earthbound perspective.

A real drone at night would be fairly hard to pick up, easier with a zoom than a prime though.
 
...real drones with their inbuilt LEDs would only be visible within around 120m so would be easy to film.
Playing devil's advocate a bit, I guess it would be easy to disconnect or mask LEDs on a hobby drone.
If the user wanted increased visibility, there are lots of lights/ light rigs sold specifically for drone users.
 
This is the only video which was posted on the internet showing what could be a drone. The video was made from someone standing at the apron of Eindhoven airport. This person is working on the airport as he says ' Sierra 2'. Sierra 2 is the name of a parking spot. This is not something a passenger would know. The plane parked is a Ryanair B737-800. EI-HGV was parked at Sierra 2 according FR24. It departed as FR2576 to Malaga at 22:41

The attached image shows the apron chart.
View attachment 86417
The video is here https://www.dumpert.nl/item/100137978_21113240
There are very few reference points on the video but I tried to work out which direction the two objects are moving. The one the camera zooms in on (marked green) doesn't seem to move much compared to the wing - perhaps slightly right and down, but the error is very large with only a wingtip to line it up - while the other one appears to move downwards (red).

1764001326056.png


The line of sight appears to be west-northwest but again there is not much to go on...

1764001913457.png



The Ryanair plane arrived at that stand from 1702 UTC (having landed at 1655) and moved off at 2130 UTC.

So the video was taken some time between those two times.
 
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Playing devil's advocate a bit, I guess it would be easy to disconnect or mask LEDs on a hobby drone.
If the user wanted increased visibility, there are lots of lights/ light rigs sold specifically for drone users.
Correct but you have to consider we have people saying they are seeing the drone, human eyes are inferior to cameras, especially at night, so if you can see something you can film it. If someone was covering the lights, it would be not be seen to be triggering these panics in the first place.

This reminds me, I can put this whole matter to bed as a UK film crew recorded drones at night earlier this year so I'll post that later.
 
In the transcript it is clear that multiple drones are seen over an extended period of time. And, that they are seen by airport staff, including the person operating the ground radio.
From the 1800 file:

13:05.082 --> 13:09.309
We just got an observation of four other ones like five minutes ago.

Nothing obvious on flight radar in the few minutes before 1813. However it seems they are only checking in with the drone team every 10 minutes or so, and so those four sightings could have been longer ago. Around 1753 there are four planes visible to the northwest.
1764007822318.png


From the 1830 file:

28:59.311 --> 29:00.192
I'm just looking at one.

29:00.713 --> 29:02.035
Oh, okay.

At 18:59Z the controller says they are currently looking at a drone.

At 1859 there was a police helicopter (PH-PXB)
circling low to the western horizon as seen from the airport. This was quite a distance away (just over 20km) so I am a bit dubious about how visible it would be. But it seems to have been hovering over one area for a long time so may have been searching for something with spotlights?

1764006261548.png


From the 2000 file:

28:28.207 --> 28:44.320
Yeah, just for information, we got a drone observation again like 2-3 minutes ago, and for your information, after the latest drone observation, we need to have at least 15 to 30 minutes no observations.

At 2024 KLM1641 flew almost directly overhead, having approached from the north:
1764006803353.png


From the 2030 file:
10:00.539 --> 10:04.485
According to my information, the latest observation was 10 minutes ago.
Is that referring to the same one as the previous mention?



From the 2030 file:
22:57.647 --> 23:00.717
That's negative, latest observation was 5 minutes ago.
Two more KLM flights out of Amsterdam passed over on the same track at 2045 and 2048 (above message was timed at about 2053).

1764008819566.png




I haven't gone through all the sightings to match them up - there is a LOT of traffic over the airport during this period.
 
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Ballparking from the estimated times here, drones being seen over the airport happened from ~17:40Z (or slightly earlier), to 20:47Z. This is a remarkable span of time to frequently be seeing drones. I would expect there to be tangible confirmation of there being a drone there, and there to be sensor data and a lot of camera footage. At 18:59Z the controller says they are currently looking at a drone.
Thanks for all your effort with the ATC recordings, after having a fight with ChatGPT which I won, I've put together a pretty infographic with the UTC/Local times:
1764031374276.png
 
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Thanks for all your effort with the ATC recordings, after having a fight with ChatGPT which I won, I've put together a pretty infographic with the UTC/Local times:
Near the end there (the 2200Z file) they say the first report was "around half past seven", but the first mention of drone activity was at 6.41pm local time according to the first clip (1730Z file).

And they are then saying they opened at half past eleven but if the timestamps are accurate then it's still more than 10 minutes before 11.30pm when they say that. Something seems amiss here.
 
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