The Belgian F-16 Night: Triangles of Light over Wavre

The Belgian UFO wave began in Eupen on 29 November 1989, when two gendarmes reported a large, silent triangle at low altitude with three bright lights at its corners. SOBEPS, a Belgian UFO research group, would eventually count about 2,600 reports. After two fruitless scrambles, the Air Force set a rule. Jets would go up only when police and radar both confirmed a sighting. On the night of 30 March 1990, both conditions were met.

About 23:00. A gendarme near Ramillies, named in the Air Force report as A. Renkin, called the Glons control centre. He could see "three independent blinking lights in the sky." Brighter than stars. Changing colour. Arranged in a triangle. The sky was clear, with a light wind.

Around 23:15 he called again. Three more lights were moving towards the first group "gradually, with irregular speeds," forming a second triangle. Wavre police confirmed it, and four other stations about 10 NM apart reported the same. Captain Pinson of the Wavre gendarmerie described four lights in a square, making short, jerky movements.

At about 23:30, Glons had a contact 8 NM north of the observers, moving slowly west at about 25 knots and 10,000 ft. At 23:50 Semmerzake, about 100 NM away, confirmed it. The scramble order came at 23:56. Two F-16s left Beauvechain Air Base at 00:05.

Nine interception attempts followed. Six radar lock-ons at 5 to 8 NM, each breaking after 10 to 60 seconds. Target speeds from 150 to 1,010 knots. Three times both jets locked on at once with matching parameters. The pilots never made visual contact.

On the ground, a gendarmerie patrol at Thorembais-les-Béguines watched two aircraft with flashing white lights climb towards a light "similar as that of a star." As they passed, it seemed to "fall down," moved to the right and dimmed towards Namur. The jets landed at about 01:10. Around 01:30, the last lights faded and vanished in four directions.

Major P. Lambrechts wrote the full report. Col. Wilfried De Brouwer signed the summary and presented it to the press on 11 July 1990. Balloons, ultralights, drones, stealth aircraft and laser projections were all ruled out. The conclusion was simple. The phenomena were not identified. The radar recordings were shown to the press, described as the first such military release.

Jean-Pierre Petit had viewed the HUD recordings on 22 June 1990. In one lock, he read a target at 150 knots that, about two seconds later, had dropped below about 200 m at a computed 990 knots. The sources still disagree on how many locks there really were.

Brian Dunning argued on Skeptoid that the F-16s locked onto each other and that the other contacts were Bragg scattering or "angel" echoes. Jean-Pierre Pharabod called the lights "probably stars." Others proposed a secret US F-117, which the Air Force excluded, or media contagion. Dunning noted that most reports of the wave came more than a week later, after media appeals. De Brouwer himself later said: "The technical evidence was insufficient to conclude that abnormal air activities took place during that evening." Auguste Meessen argued in 2011 that the case remains unexplained.

The wave's most famous photograph, taken at Petit-Rechain on 4 April 1990, turned out to be a hoax. In 2011 Patrick Maréchal confessed it was a styrofoam model hung on a string. No hoax has ever been alleged for the radar and police observations of 30 March. The Belgian UFO wave remains the European reference point for black triangle reports.