Since this Monday, April 13, large American planes have been flying over the sky of Lorraine, especially in Moselle-East. These are military precision dropping exercises that take place every year. Many onlookers make the trip to observe them.
Above Grostenquin, Saint-Avold, Morhange (Moselle), and many municipalities in Lorraine, American planes! They are stationed all year round at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, one of the largest US Air Force bases in the world, and they are conducting exercises. As witnessed on social media since this Monday, April 13, these are training sessions that have been taking place for years. With each passage, in late morning and early evening, curious observers gather to watch them.
“It’s impressive!” Among them is Nicolas Muller, a resident of Saint-Avold. When the 23-year-old man knows that the planes are approaching Grostenquin, he drives there. “It’s quite impressive!” he says, “because these are planes that we are not used to seeing.” They are transport planes, Lockheed C-130 Hercules with four propellers. “We are lucky to observe planes from another country training here. We love it!”
With a friend, he created in late 2025 the Facebook page “Les guetteurs du ciel-Grostenquin”. Both share information about these planes and their routes that they spend time observing with a geolocation application: “they descend very low into the Vosges, sometimes even into Alsace, and line up above the Grostenquin runway for their drops.” Precision drops of which he has been a witness: “often heavy loads, so drops of crates, but also, more rarely, troops. The first time I saw them was last year,” he remembers.
Passionate about aviation since he watched the movie Top Gun in his childhood, Nicolas Muller also shares all his photos on the same Facebook page. In addition to the American military exercises, he says he sees all sorts of planes throughout the year: Dutch Apaches, Tiger helicopters, or even Mirage 2000 from the French army.
“We feel like Grostenquin air base is abandoned, but in reality, it is still very much used by the military forces, and that’s what we wanted to share on our Facebook page,” Nicolas explains. He is delighted to see that many other people comment and also post their photos below his to continue telling the story of the Grostenquin airbase.
Contacted by ICI Lorraine, the French army and the American army have not wished to communicate the end date of these exercises. The former Grostenquin air base still hosted, in 2025, nearly 6,000 caravans and 26,000 travelers during the evangelical gathering “Vie et lumière.” In late January 2026, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez announced, before the National Assembly, that there would be no more gatherings since military exercises are planned during the summer on the base.
