U.S. approves $236M sale of cruise missiles to Belgium

The U.S. State Department approved a potential $236 million sale of AGM-184 Joint Strike Missiles to the Belgian government on May 18, clearing the path for Brussels to arm its growing fleet of F-35A fighter jets with a weapon specifically designed to strike ships and hardened targets from well outside the range of enemy air defenses.

For a country that until recently relied on unguided bombs and short-range guided munitions, the acquisition marks a fundamental shift in what Belgium can bring to a NATO fight.

The Joint Strike Missile, known as the JSM and designated AGM-184 in U.S. service, is a Norwegian-designed cruise missile that Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace developed as a longer-range, air-launched evolution of its Naval Strike Missile. An enlarged air-launched derivative of Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile, the JSM was adapted for integration onto the F-35A and F-35C during the missile’s initial development phase, and the Lockheed Martin-built aircraft can carry it both internally and externally, enabling a range of strike missions against maritime and land-based targets. That internal carriage capability is what makes the weapon strategically significant: two missiles can fit inside the F-35’s hidden weapons bays, allowing the jet to fly into heavily defended airspace while maintaining the low radar signature that defines the platform. An F-35 carrying missiles on external pylons looks nothing like a stealthy fifth-generation fighter on radar. An F-35 carrying them internally looks like nothing at all.

The approved package covers the missiles themselves plus spare parts, consumables, training aids, testing equipment, software, technical documentation, transportation, and contractor support. The two principal contractors named in the sale notification are Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace in Kongsberg, Norway, where the missiles are built, and RTX Corporation, the American defense and aerospace company headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, which produces components and handles integration work. The State Department notification does not specify the number of missiles included, and the quantity Belgium intends to purchase under the potential $236 million ceiling remains publicly unknown.

On July 18, 2025, Belgium’s Council of Ministers approved the purchase of Joint Strike Missiles as part of the multi-year Ammunition Readiness Plan 2025 to 2029, marking the first acquisition of cruise missiles by the Belgian Armed Forces. Defence Minister Theo Francken, who has driven Belgium’s rearmament agenda at a pace that drew attention across NATO, previously described adding JSM to the Belgian arsenal as a “game changer” for national deterrence and operational autonomy, according to The Aviationist. The Ammunition Readiness Plan 2025 allocated an initial €2.3 billion to be committed within the year, constituting the largest ammunition investment in Belgian military history, designed to address structural shortages that have limited Belgium’s operational readiness.

The JSM acquisition is inseparable from Belgium’s F-35 program, which has itself been accelerating. The first three Belgian F-35A fighters arrived at Florennes Air Base on October 13, 2025, following a transatlantic ferry flight from Fort Worth, Texas, while eight Belgian F-35As were stationed at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona earlier in 2025 for pilot conversion and advanced training. Belgium originally ordered 34 F-35As, and in February 2026 Defence Minister Francken confirmed to Breaking Defense that Belgium intends to sign a contract with Lockheed Martin for 11 additional jets, raising the planned fleet to 45 aircraft. Arming those jets with cruise missiles before the fleet is fully delivered shows how seriously Brussels is taking the timeline.

Belgium joins a rapidly growing coalition of nations buying into the JSM. Confirmed operators include Norway, the United States, Japan, Germany, and Australia, with the Royal Norwegian Air Force receiving its first operational JSMs in April 2025, Germany signing a €478.7 million agreement in June 2025, Australia placing a substantial order in September 2024, and Japan making multiple procurement rounds since 2019. The U.S. Air Force is buying 268 missiles across a five-year plan, and the weapon now carries the American designation AGM-184A Kraken, according to Air and Space Forces Magazine. That expanding international user base matters for cost and sustainment: a production line supporting six air forces is more durable and more capable of scaling than one built around a single customer.

NATO’s eastern flank has fundamentally changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and European members of the alliance have been moving under considerable American and internal pressure to raise defense spending and acquire the weapons needed to actually fight rather than merely symbolic capability. Defence Minister Francken explicitly connected Belgium’s ammunition push to the war in Ukraine, explaining that the conflict “shows that ammunition consumption is immense, which is why we need to enter into strategic partnerships with manufacturers to keep production lines operational.” A cruise missile that can hit a moving ship or a hardened command center from 200-plus kilometers away is not a symbolic weapon. It is the kind of capability that changes what an adversary has to account for.

The JSM entered service with the Norwegian Air Force in April 2025, and the U.S. Air Force ordered $240.9 million worth of missiles in fiscal 2026 as its second production lot, with deliveries sustaining through November 2028. Belgium’s congressional notification now adds another layer of demand to that production pipeline at a moment when Kongsberg is simultaneously filling orders for Japan, Australia, Germany, Norway, and the United States. How quickly Belgian missiles can be built and delivered will depend in part on where Brussels falls in that queue, a detail the State Department notification does not address.