Eighty American helicopters through Belgian skies this Tuesday, 29 January

The American military chose to send their equipment and their soldiers through Belgium

More than 80 US helicopters will cross the Belgian sky on Tuesday. The US military will move the aircraft and 1,900 soldiers through the port of Zeebrugge to strengthen the eastern flank of NATO, a deployment that runs parallel to that of an armoured brigade passing through the port of Antwerp.

These helicopters of different types (AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, CH-47 Chinook, UH-60L and M Blackhawk transport helicopters) come from Kansas. They will arrive in Zeebrugge on January 29, before flying to the American base of Chièvres (between Mons and Ath) and continuing through Germany to Eastern Europe.

These helicopters are landing in Europe while the US Army also chose for the second time – on four troop rotations to date – the port of Antwerp and Belgium to move to Eastern Europe the First Air Cavalry brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, composed, in all, of more than 3,000 soldiers and 3,500 pieces of equipment, including battle tanks, howitzers, tracked vehicles, and so on…

Operation “Atlantic Resolve” is purely American and ongoing since 2016. It aims to strengthen the eastern flank of NATO and dissuade Russia from any inclination to attack an allied country. It follows the annexation of the Ukrainian Peninsula of Crimea by Moscow in the spring of 2014. In the wake, the United States and NATO have decreed an unprecedented deployment of Allied military presence in Eastern Europe in the face of Russia considered “aggressive”. This posture, decided by Democratic President Barack Obama, was confirmed by his Republican successor Donald Trump, despite his initial reluctance to commit to Article 5 of the NATO treaty that deals with collective defence between allies.