The two-week NATO military exercise “Air Defender 2023” held from June 12-23, 2023, over mainly Germany has been all the rage. It’s been the largest deployment of air forces in NATO’s history, demonstrating transatlantic solidarity.

Good friend and fellow Aviation Photographer Remco Donselaar and I got the idea to head out to the aforementioned three airbases for a three-day road trip during the second week of the exercise. The weather forecast looked overall sunny though hot. We followed through, got familiar with any intel necessary, booked an Airbnb and packed our bags!

The FULL BLOG also contains an interview with USAF Michigan ANG A-10C Pilot Maj. Brett Devries!

PREVIEW!

Stichting FokkerFour is currently training their aerial display for the upcoming season after a forced absence of two years due to the CoVID-19 pandemic.

It was really great to meet the team again and shoot up close and doing the group portrait!

Big thanks to all of the team, Flight Safety Flugplatz Nordhorn-Lingen and a special shout out to Stephen, Zeno and Diana!

After two years of cancelled events and pandemic lockdown WE ARE BACK!!

We’ve been trying and planning to attend several events leading up to the 42nd International Sanicole Airshow’ (ISA21), 9th ISA21 Sunset Airshow and ‘Extraordinary Tiger Meet’ (XTM) held in Belgium.

As far as the spectators side of things everything got green-lit. So our visit to the Sunset show was on! After shooting the arrivals in between the cornfields of Kleine-Brogel Airbase we drove to Hechtel-Eksel Aerodrome for the 9th ISA Sunset Airshow.
With good weather we saw the RAF Red Arrows, Patrouille Suisse, BAF A-109 display, HuAF JAS-39 Gripen display, BAF ‘Vador’ in his ‘Dark Falcon’ F-16 and the Scandinavian Airshow Skycat Wingwalkers among others. Lots of Flares and fireworks at dusk!