Bulgaria's main airport will shut down civilian operations this weekend to accommodate American military aircraft—not in some remote military base, but at Sofia's Vasil Levski Airport, the capital's international gateway.
This is what European defense burden-sharing actually looks like. Not abstract NATO budget percentages debated in Brussels committee rooms, but a capital city airport closing Terminal 1 so seven US aerial refueling tankers and a fleet of C-17 cargo planes can stage for operations—operations that Bulgarian officials describe, with careful vagueness, as "training related to NATO's enhanced vigilance activities."
The closures are brief but significant: 01:15 to 02:50 on February 23, and 01:05 to 03:35 on February 24. During those windows, all civilian air traffic stops. Only military flights permitted.
Sofia is hosting seven refueling tankers, three C-17 and C-130 cargo aircraft, several Boeing 747 military transports, and six KC-135R Stratotankers from MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. They're part of a larger American mobilization: more than 120 US Air Force planes have crossed the Atlantic in recent weeks, including four dozen F-16s, three squadrons of F-35A stealth fighters, and 12 F-22 Raptors. Additional aircraft are positioned at RAF Lakenheath, the Azores, Crete, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group is en route to the Arabian Sea.
Bulgaria's Defense Ministry calls it training. Iliana Iotova, Bulgaria's president, calls it something else: inadequate communication. She told reporters the presidency received only a "cursory letter" about the operation, expressing concern about coordination between state institutions.
Welcome to NATO's eastern flank, where alliance burden-sharing means your capital's airport becomes an American staging post. Bulgaria joined NATO in 2004 and signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement in 2006 permitting US forces to use Bulgarian bases for third-country missions without specific authorization—though consultation is expected. That consultation, it seems, consisted of a brief letter.
Brussels talks endlessly about European strategic autonomy. But when Washington needs to position refueling tankers and stealth fighters for potential Middle East operations, it's European airports that accommodate them, European airspace that opens, European capitals that adjust civilian flight schedules. The infrastructure of American power projection runs through NATO allies who signed agreements two decades ago that are now being called in.
For Bulgarians booking weekend flights, this is an inconvenience. For European defense planners, it's a reminder: NATO burden-sharing isn't just about hitting the 2% GDP spending target Brussels obsesses over. It's about Sofia's airport closing at 1 a.m. so American tankers can refuel jets heading somewhere Iliana Iotova learned about in a cursory letter.
Brussels decides more than you think. But sometimes Washington decides more—and Sofia finds out when the flight schedules change.
