This episode of Hunter’s War is a conversation with Luc Rombout on whether Belgium, and Belgian society, is ready for a crisis that could arrive long before its defence plans expect one.
Belgium has reached 2% of GDP on defence and its F-35s are arriving. Yet a year ago Luc warned in De Tijd that if the country keeps investing the same way, “by 2035, we will be ready for the war of 2020.” The defence plans roll out largely unchanged to 2035, while Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine put new air defence into service within months. Ask decision-makers what happens if a crisis comes in 2027, he says, and “the reply is silence.”
Drawing on 30 years across emergency management, reserve military service, humanitarian work in Ukraine and crisis-management research, Luc explains why Belgium lags its neighbours, what High Reliability Organisations can teach the armed forces about “fight tonight” readiness, and why societies need robustness and reactivity before they can talk about resilience. It starts with a simple pen-and-paper test: what would a week without electricity mean for you?
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