Florennes did not exist as an airfield before the war. In 1942 the Luftwaffe saw a gap in its air defence between Saint-Trond and Reims and began building Flugplatz 401 on the Florennes-Juzaine plateau. It was finished in June 1943 and first hosted Messerschmitt Bf 110 night fighters, later radar-equipped Junkers Ju 88s. In November 1943 Focke-Wulf 190 day fighters of Jagdgeschwader 26 arrived as the American daylight offensive intensified. In August 1944 the Germans withdrew, flew the last aircraft to Germany and wrecked the installations.

American troops reached Florennes on 3 September 1944 and the field was operational as A-78 Juzaine on 11 September. The 422nd Night Fighter Squadron came with P-61 Black Widows on 16 September, followed by the P-38 Lightnings of the 370th and 474th Fighter Groups, credited with 54 air victories, notably in the Battle of the Bulge. The P-47 Thunderbolts of the 365th Fighter Group replaced the 370th in late January 1945, and B-26 Marauders of the 344th Bomb Group flew some of the last raids on Germany from here.

The Americans left for good on 15 September 1945. The English-language Wikipedia gives 1936 as the construction date, which the base’s own history contradicts: there was no airfield before the German works of 1942–43. The French-language Wikipedia adds that the first B-24 Liberator landed on 11 September 1944 and the first B-26s of the 344th on 5 April 1945. After the Americans left, a small Belgian detachment kept the damaged field in order through 1946 until the new air force decided what to do with it.

When an independent Belgian air force was created on 15 October 1946, Florennes was chosen as a fighter base early in 1947. The 161st Day Fighter Wing was to have two squadrons of Spitfire XIVs; its first pilots arrived in October 1947 with one Airspeed Oxford and two Harvards to train on, and the first two Spitfires on 15 October. In February 1948 the wing became the 2nd Day Fighter Wing, with 1 and 2 Squadrons. By January 1949 only 17 Spitfires were serviceable and the type was already obsolete.

Jets arrived on 18 April 1951 with the first F-84 Thunderjets, enough for three squadrons, and a building programme gave the Juzaine, Corenne and Bois Doyen zones new hangars and dispersals. A new main runway opened in 1953. Between 1955 and 1957 Belgium replaced its F-84Gs with 197 F-84F Thunderstreaks from American military aid, and the Thunderstreak stayed at Florennes for 17 years. The base history dates the first Belgian supersonic flight by two 2nd Wing aircraft to 17 August 1955; a later base article gives 30 August 1955, and names Major Branders and Captain Laloux.

From 1964 to 1966 the wing held a NATO nuclear alert with four F-84Fs ready to launch in 15 minutes, supported by an American detachment. In the 1960s both squadrons joined NATO’s mobile reaction forces, 1 Squadron as primary force for the southern zone and 2 Squadron as reserve in the north. On 12 October 1962 the wing adopted its boar’s head emblem and the hunting cry “Taïaut”. According to the French-language Wikipedia the base was named after Jean Offenberg, the Belgian Battle of Britain pilot killed in 1942, in 1956.

In February 1968 Belgium ordered 106 Mirage 5s, split into 63 BA fighter-bombers, 16 BD two-seaters and 27 BR reconnaissance aircraft. The first reached Florennes on 29 June 1970, 2 Squadron was operational on the type in June 1971, and 42 Squadron arrived on 15 April 1971 to convert to the reconnaissance version. The last F-84F flight with 1 Squadron was on 30 June 1971. The Mirage squadrons were assigned to the German front, from close support near the Iron Curtain to deep strikes.

Belgium ordered 116 F-16s in 1975 and 44 more in 1983. The 2nd Tactical Wing’s first F-16 landed on 14 October 1988, 1 Squadron joined 2 Squadron on the type in March 1989 and 42 Squadron, still on Mirages, left for Bierset. On 4 March 1996 350 Squadron, one of the two Belgian squadrons of the wartime RAF, came from Beauvechain, giving the base three squadrons again and the 24-hour quick reaction alert with two armed jets at 15 minutes.

The Florennes F-16s flew from Villafranca from October 1996, from Amendola from January 1999 and, between 24 March and 10 June 1999, all three squadrons took part in the strikes on Serbia and Kosovo. Modernised F-16 MLUs arrived from September 2000 and the last unmodified jet left in April 2004. 2 Squadron was disbanded in 2001. Afghanistan (2005–2014), Libya (2011) and the campaign against the Islamic State from Jordan (from 2014) followed. By 2023 the base’s fleet was down to about 20 F-16s.

Florennes’ most contested chapter began with NATO’s answer to the Soviet SS-20: Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missiles in five European countries. Belgium hesitated longer than most, and the peace movement filled Brussels’ streets: 40,000 marchers in December 1979, 200,000 in 1981 and 400,000 in October 1983, according to the French-language Wikipedia’s account of the euromissile crisis.

The base history says the first personnel of the USAF’s 485th Tactical Missile Wing arrived on 15 March 1984 amid intense anti-nuclear demonstrations, and that the unit was fully operational in August 1985 with the 16 planned missiles and more than 1,000 American personnel. US-derived accounts date the wing’s activation at Florennes to August 1984 and record periodic peace-movement protests near the main gate. The figures differ: the base counts 16 missiles, while an encyclopedia entry on the BGM-109G gives the wing’s 71st Tactical Missile Squadron 48, apparently the full allocation rather than what was deployed.

The INF Treaty of 8 December 1987 banned ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 km. A ten-man Soviet inspection team visited Florennes in August 1988 to check compliance, and the last Americans left on 28 February 1989, ending the missile mission on Belgian soil. The wing was inactivated later that year; the lineage summarised on Wikipedia gives 30 September 1989. The empty missile-wing site did not stay idle for long: within weeks it had a new, non-nuclear NATO tenant.

The empty missile-wing buildings did not stay empty. In March 1989 NATO’s Tactical Leadership Programme moved in. Founded in January 1978 at Fürstenfeldbruck by Germany, Belgium, Canada, the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, it had moved to Jever in September 1979 and arrived at Florennes with eight member nations. Its aim was to give NATO’s Central European air forces a common tactical doctrine by training future formation and mission leaders together.

At Florennes it ran six four-week courses a year, each bringing up to 30 aircraft and about 500 personnel to the base. Membership shifted over the two decades: Italy and Denmark joined in 1996, Canada left in 1997 and Spain came in in 2002, according to the Spanish-language Wikipedia’s account. Greece and France joined in 2009, the year the programme left Belgium, giving it the ten permanent members it has today: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

By the 2000s tactics had moved to medium and high altitude, and the Belgian airspace and weather no longer suited the syllabus. After 20 years the programme left for Albacete in Spain; the base dates the departure to 30 June 2009, the English-language Wikipedia to 31 July 2009, and the new site was inaugurated on 1 October 2009. The French-language Wikipedia puts the local cost at about 50 jobs.

Remotely piloted aircraft came to Florennes in 2011, when 80 UAV Squadron moved in with the Israeli-designed B-Hunter, in Belgian service since 2002. It had flown in Bosnia in 2005, over the Congolese elections in 2006 and over Antwerp’s port on counter-terrorism watches from 2015, and was retired as obsolete in September 2020. Its successor, the MQ-9B SkyGuardian, was ordered in 2020: four aircraft and two ground stations. The first flew in California in February 2025, reached Florennes by A400M on 18 August 2025 and was commissioned there on 23 September 2025 with the reactivated 2 Squadron “Comet”.

Belgium chose the F-35A in 2018 and ordered 34; building work on a 50,000-square-metre F-35 complex at Florennes, with four simulators, began on 22 May 2023. The first eight Belgian jets stayed at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for training. On 13 October 2025 the first three landed at Florennes for 1 Squadron, flown from the United States via the Azores; the Chief of Defence and the Defence Minister were waiting. 10 Squadron was reactivated the same year to run the simulators and support the type.

Sources count the October 2025 arrivals differently: Belgian Defence says three and the base lists FL009, FL010 and FL012; a specialist serial history lists FL009 to FL012, and Aviation24 counts four. Three more joined in September 2026, which the base dates to 17 September, Belgian Wings to 18 September and Aviation24 to 25 September, bringing the Florennes total to seven. Initial operational capability is planned for summer 2027, when Kleine-Brogel is to receive its first four F-35s; a further 11 were announced in February 2026 for a fleet of 45.