Belgium Moves to Arm MQ-9B Drones With 240 Hellfire Missiles After U.S. Approval.

The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $79 million Foreign Military Sale to Belgium for up to 240 AGM-114R2 Hellfire missiles and related support. The move strengthens Belgium’s shift toward an armed MQ-9B force and expands NATO precision strike capacity.

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) confirmed on December 8, 2025, that the U.S. State Department approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Belgium of up to 240 AGM-114R2 Hellfire missiles and related support, for an estimated 79 million dollars. The package includes engineering, training, logistics, technical documentation, and other sustainment elements. DSCA links the deal directly to strengthening Belgium’s combat capability for counterterrorism operations and underlines that Brussels is already accustomed to advanced air-to-ground weapons through its F-16 and F-35 programs.
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Belgium's AGM-114R2 Hellfire brings the MQ-9B a combat-proven precision strike capability, combining an eight-kilometer laser-guided engagement range with a programmable multi-purpose warhead able to defeat armored vehicles, light structures, and fast-moving targets while minimizing collateral effects (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The AGM-114R2 belongs to the Hellfire II family, a compact air-to-surface missile roughly 1.8 meters long, around 49 kilograms in weight, with a diameter of 178 millimeters. It uses a solid-fuel rocket motor that accelerates the weapon to around Mach 1.3, giving an effective engagement range of about eight kilometers from rotary platforms or unmanned aircraft. Guidance is via semi-active laser homing, so the missile rides reflected laser energy from an on-board sensor, another aircraft, or a ground team.

The R2 standard carries a programmable multi-purpose warhead that can defeat armor, light structures, small boats, or soft targets while limiting collateral damage compared to older anti-armor variants. Fuze settings can be tailored for impact, delayed, or airburst effects, allowing the same round to punch through walls, shatter light vehicles, or neutralize dismounted fighters in the open. The modular design, with separate guidance, warhead, and propulsion sections, eases integration across NATO fleets and supports software-based upgrades over the missile’s life.

In Belgian service, the Hellfire story is really about the MQ-9B SkyGuardian. Belgium received its first MQ-9B system at Florennes Air Base in August 2025 and describes the platform as a strategic leap in intelligence, surveillance,, and reconnaissance, certified to operate in civilian airspace with long-endurance missions at home and abroad. Industry and open-source reporting now confirm that the Hellfire package is intended to arm these aircraft, turning what is today an ISR asset into a fully armed MALE drone capable of precision engagement against vehicles, small boats, and hardened firing positions.

Operationally, a Belgian MQ-9B crew will be able to loiter for many hours over a crisis zone, then prosecute a fleeting target with a single Hellfire round designated either from the drone’s own sensors or from a forward observer. Semi-active laser guidance demands continuous designation but also allows very tight control of the shot and deliberate abort options up to the last seconds of flight. For counterterrorism support, coalition deployments or overwatch of special forces, this combination of persistence and selective strike is far more politically acceptable than unguided or area-effect weapons, as past U.S. and allied Hellfire employment in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Sahel has demonstrated.

The timing of the order also fits neatly into Belgium’s wider modernization cycle. The first Belgian F-35A arrived at Luke Air Force Base in December 2024, opening a multi-year training pipeline that will eventually deliver 34 fifth-generation fighters to Florennes and Kleine-Brogel and has already been expanded with additional orders in 2025. Hellfire is not part of the F-35’s standard weapons set, and there is no indication Brussels intends to integrate it into the new fighter. Instead, both programs point in the same direction: a force built around networked sensors and precision effects, with F-35s handling high-end air campaigns and MQ-9Bs plus Hellfire covering enduring, lower-intensity strike missions.

On the ground, Belgium is already investing heavily in modern anti-tank guided missiles. Brussels has ordered 761 Akeron MP rounds from MBDA to arm its future Jaguar EBRC reconnaissance vehicles under the CaMo program, with deliveries running from 2025 to 2029 and Spike systems retained until roughly 2030. Those missiles will give the Land Component dismounted and vehicle-launched fire-and-forget capability, but Belgium has never before fielded a comparable precision missile on an air platform. Hellfire, therefore, fills a very specific gap: a combat-proven, laser-guided weapon tailored to MQ-9-class drones rather than armored vehicles.

Within NATO, the AGM-114R2 has well-known competitors. Britain’s Brimstone uses a millimetric-wave radar seeker combined with an optional laser channel in later variants, offering true fire-and-forget engagement and far greater reach, up to several tens of kilometers from fast jets, at significantly higher cost and complexity. Spike ER2, marketed by EuroSpike and Rafael, trades radar for an electro-optical seeker and a two-way datalink that allows man-in-the-loop control out to 10 kilometers from ground launchers and roughly 16 kilometers from helicopters. The emerging U.S. Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, JAGM, essentially merges the Hellfire form factor with a dual-mode radar and laser seeker, but it is still working through U.S. fielding and export cycles.

Belgium’s choice of Hellfire over Brimstone or Spike ER2 for MQ-9B reflects a pragmatic calculus. The missile is already fully integrated on the platform, widely used by U.S. forces and several European air arms, and available under a relatively straightforward FMS case that bundles training, documentation, and sustainment. For a small fleet of four MQ-9B systems and an initial stock of 240 missiles, interoperability with U.S. procedures and logistics matters more than marginal range gains. DSCA’s emphasis on counterterrorism suggests that Belgian planners are thinking about persistent overwatch in expeditionary theaters, maritime security in the North Sea, and potential NATO surveillance taskings along the alliance’s eastern flank, all scenarios where eight-kilometer laser engagements from a high-endurance drone are tactically sufficient.

Strategically, the relatively modest missile quantity looks like a combined training and initial operations pool rather than a mass-warfare stockpile. It is enough to arm Belgian MQ-9Bs for intensive workups and limited deployments while Akeron MP enters service on land platforms and F-35 squadrons ramp up in Europe. For NATO, the decision signals that Belgium is stepping fully into the club of allies operating armed MALE drones, pairing fifth-generation fighters with remotely piloted aircraft capable of carefully calibrated, low-collateral strikes. For Brussels, it is a concrete move from unarmed ISR to a mature precision-strike posture that will shape Belgian rules of engagement and doctrine well into the 2030s.