The AWACS programme involves the distribution of maintenance work among the participating nations. The Netherlands thereby receives its due portion of that work, which creates jobs in the Dutch aviation industry and other sectors. The E-3A Component currently has a workforce of about 2,900. This includes 350 personnel of Dutch nationality, about 50 of whom are military and around 300 are civilian staff members. Most of these Dutch members of the Component are from the province of Limburg. The air base is one of the largest employers in the border region. Some of the 2,900 NATO personnel rent or own houses in the Netherlands, go shopping there for all kinds of items, send their children to school there, go there for meals or overnight stays, etc. According to our annual Economic Impact Study, the Component’s overall contribution to the Dutch economy as a whole amounted to 71.8 million euros in 2011. About 20 million euros of that sum were spent in (the southern part of) the Netherlands by Component members in 2011.

Decisions about far-reaching proposals of this kind fall within the competence of the NATO nations. The E-3A Component has no say in this. The Netherlands is indeed in favour of this project, but the funding of it has to be approved by all the NATO nations. The countries participating in the NATO AWACS programme have decided that extension of the runway is not an operational necessity. It is therefore almost impossible to obtain funding for this project. Furthermore, the German government has ascertained that as a consequence of runway extension the noise level increase in Germany would be greater than the noise level decrease in the Netherlands. Moreover it would be extremely difficult to obtain authorization for this project in Germany in view of factors such as the presence of a local nature reserve there. This aspect obviously resulted in complaints from German authorities and nature lovers who, unlike their Dutch counterparts in former times, had already had to accept the felling of trees in that nature reserve to create the obstacle-free zone on the eastern side of the air base

No. Tree maintenance has to take place to ensure compliance with the international aviation safety regulations relating to obstacle-free zones, which have to be applied at all airfields, including Geilenkirchen Air Base. These rules state that no obstacles exceeding a specified height are permitted on approach and departure routes. The maximum permitted height of obstacles on these routes depends on their distance from the runway. The further away they are, the taller they are allowed to be. The upward growth of the existing trees is causing them to breach the required safety margins. This means that during takeoff from a wet runway in conditions with a strong side wind the aircraft have to carry less fuel. We then have to perform more flight movements or arrange additional tanker flights to provide the necessary air refuelling. During landing there is a decisive point where landing clearance will not be granted unless the pilot can see the runway. If he is unable to see it, a new landing attempt has to be made. As a result of the trees’ growth this decisive point is shifting from a location near the runway (with a greater chance that the pilot will be able to see the runway) to a location between Schinveld and Brunssum. If the landing has to be aborted, the pilot has to increase the engine thrust in order to ascend and ‘go around’. This acceleration inevitably occurs between the two built-up areas and results in an additional flight movement that would not be necessary if the height of the trees were properly managed. So the lack of tree management results in more noise, not less.

Under international safety regulations every civil and military airfield has to have specified obstacle-free zones. Several trees are currently protruding into the obstacle-free zone on the west side of NATO Air Base Geilenkirchen. The issue therefore does not involve an area of 14 hectares, as is incorrectly stated in many media reports; of course the number of trees is still slowly increasing as a result of natural growth season season. These trees are standing on the Dutch side of the border, on land owned by the Netherlands’ Ministry of Defence and privately owned land. Accomplishment of tree management work needs to be authorized by a permit from the municipal authority of Onderbanken. The E-3A Component takes the view that the topping of trees will be sufficient to enable operational restrictions to be lifted and unnecessary flight movements avoided. The question of whether the trees should preferably be topped or completely cut down is a matter for the Dutch forestry agency, which is reviewing which of these options is better for the quality of the woodland. The Component has no say in this matter.

Never. AWACS aircraft do not dump any kerosene over the Schinveld woodlands and have never done so. Kerosene discharge is an emergency procedure used by either civil or military aircraft in extreme situations when they have to land immediately and are still too heavy to be able to do this safely. In such cases, after obtaining permission from the air traffic control authority, the pilot can lighten the airplane by discharging kerosene at high altitude and within a designated zone of the airspace. This exceptional measure is not used recklessly in either military or civil aviation, and certainly not during the landing itself.

No. The U.S. AWACS aircraft are equipped with the same engines as the NATO AWACS, and various other American military planes are fitted with almost identical engines.

This idea is wrong. Neither in America nor in Europe is there a “flight ban” applying to AWACS aircraft. Military airplanes are not subject to the same standards as commercial aircraft, just as the standards for trucks using the roads are different from those for passenger cars. NATO AWACS aircraft can be operated anywhere in the world - they regularly make use of civil airports such as Munich and Berlin, and every year they take part in exercises in the U.S.A. and Canada.

No, this is not true. The annual number of flight movements over the Netherlands from Geilenkirchen Air Base has steadily decreased since the year 2000, from approx. 4000 at that time to about less than 2000 in recent years. The low number of flight movements at Geilenkirchen Air Base in recent years is particularly due to several operations, in Afghanistan, Libya and NATO's Eastern border. The decrease from a total of 4000 to less than 2000 movements is the result of the noise reduction policy and the measures taken by the E-3A Component to limit the disturbance experienced by local inhabitants. The flight simulator is therefore being used more intensively, and about 65% of flight movements per year are accomplished at air bases in the Netherlands and elsewhere. 

NATO Air Base Geilenkirchen is equipped with radar for air traffic control. This enables our air traffic controllers to ‘talk pilots down’ to the runway from either direction. The German side of the runway - our preferred runway for reasons relating to noise pollution control and other aspects - is also equipped with an instrument landing system enabling pilots to guide themselves by using onboard instruments, and an air traffic controller on the ground is not essential. As both a radar-controlled landing and an ILS landing make about the same amount of noise, there is no major difference between them in that respect. To ensure that an ILS can operate without hindrance, large areas of terrain have to be kept completely obstacle-free. On the Dutch side that would require not the topping but the cutting down of the trees in large areas of woodland there. An ILS is more accurate than radar control: aircraft are therefore able to land with the aid of ILS under worse weather conditions than they are permitted to do under radar control. That is certainly an operational advantage, but there is no operational necessity to have an ILS for both runways. In view of the mandatory requirement for the rigorous cutting down of trees the installation of an ILS on the Dutch side was designated as unacceptable within the AWACS Limburg Committee.