Inside Germany’s €12B Long-Range Missile Plan: From US Tomahawks to Ukrainian Drones

The central shift is doctrinal.

For decades, Germany's contribution to NATO's conventional posture was heavily associated with territorial defence, logistics, and support for allied operations. The new procurement architecture is built around the ability to threaten an adversary's rear areas directly.

The distinction matters. A conventional deterrent is not only about possessing weapons; it is about convincing an opponent that its military infrastructure cannot remain safely beyond the immediate battlefield. A force capable of reaching 2,000 kilometres or more would put supply networks, air bases and command facilities within a much larger area at risk.

For Germany, that creates a new layer between conventional battlefield operations and the nuclear deterrence provided by NATO. The objective is to increase the costs of aggression without crossing the nuclear threshold.

Berlin is proposing to do so in stages rather than wait for a single, technologically ambitious weapons system to arrive.

The first layer is scheduled for operational qualification in 2027. Germany is negotiating with at least two of three shortlisted suppliers for relatively inexpensive, mass-producible cruise missiles. The candidates include Anthem, developed by US-Israeli start-up Covenant Industries, and two Ukrainian systems: BARS, from an unnamed Ukrainian manufacturer, and Flamingo, developed by Fire Point.

This is perhaps the most consequential part of the proposal.

Ukraine moves closer to the centre of NATO procurement

The presence of Ukrainian manufacturers in a German long-range strike programme represents more than another supplier competition.

Ukraine has spent years developing and producing long-range strike systems under wartime conditions, with an emphasis on low unit costs, rapid iteration and the ability to operate in an environment shaped by electronic warfare and dense air defences. Germany's interest in these companies amounts to institutional recognition that some of the most relevant lessons for Europe's future missile forces are being generated outside the traditional Western defence industry.

Fire Point's Flamingo and the unnamed BARS producer would therefore enter a procurement environment historically dominated by established European and American prime contractors.

That could alter the economics of European weapons acquisition.

The traditional model has often favoured technically sophisticated programmes developed over many years by a small number of major contractors. The German proposal instead creates room for a second model: relatively simple systems that can be produced in large numbers, brought into service quickly and potentially replenished at a pace suited to high-intensity warfare.

The logic comes directly from the changing character of modern conflict. A small inventory of extremely expensive missiles may provide exceptional capability, but it can also become a strategic liability if a war consumes precision weapons faster than industry can replace them.

Germany's proposed four-track structure appears designed to address that problem precisely.

A missile force built in layers

The first track provides quantity and speed. The second is intended to fill the gap while European capabilities mature.

Following an agreement between Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the US government at the NATO summit in Ankara in July, Germany plans to acquire US land-based Typhon launchers equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles. These systems would provide an immediately available long-range capability in the late 2020s, rather than leaving the Bundeswehr dependent on weapons that will not arrive for another decade.

The third and fourth tracks look further ahead.

Under the Trinity House Agreement, Germany and the UK are developing a high-end precision cruise missile and a hypersonic glide weapon intended to penetrate advanced air defences at ranges exceeding 2,000 kilometres. The programme is aimed at the mid-2030s and represents the technologically most ambitious element of the proposed architecture.

The spending reflects that hierarchy. Nearly €9 billion is allocated to joint development and procurement, with additional funds earmarked for maintenance and sustainment. A further €1.8 billion is assigned to cruise missile development and procurement, alongside €97 million for sustainment.

The result is not one weapons programme but a portfolio: cheap systems for volume, an American bridge capability, and expensive European-led systems for the future.

That is a more resilient model than betting the entire deterrent on a single generation of missile.

European autonomy - with an American bridge

There is an obvious contradiction at the heart of the plan.

Germany wants greater European capacity to conduct deep strike, yet its medium-term solution depends on US weaponry. The Typhon and Tomahawk systems are intended to close the gap before German-European systems become available, making Washington an important part of Berlin's conventional deterrence architecture even as Germany seeks greater strategic freedom.

The British partnership adds another complication. The long-term programme is European in character but not confined to the European Union, since the UK is no longer an EU member.

This makes the proposal less a clean march towards European strategic autonomy than an attempt to construct a more diversified European military-industrial base.

That may be its most realistic feature.

Rather than replacing American capabilities overnight, Berlin is layering them with Ukrainian production and European research. The objective is to reduce dependence on any single supplier or technological pathway while retaining access to US capabilities during the transition.

The difficult question of scale

The €12 billion figure is politically significant, but it does not yet amount to an authorised procurement programme.

The Defence Ministry has declined to comment on individual programmes or the aggregate figure, saying the measures remain internal budget proposals. Defence expenditures above €25 million require prior approval from the Bundestag's Budget Committee before contracts can become legally binding.

That leaves the parliamentary question open.

More fundamentally, Germany will have to decide whether the new doctrine can be supported by an industrial base capable of delivering missiles in the quantities implied by the strategy. The point of the first track is precisely to move away from scarcity by introducing cheaper, mass-producible weapons. But achieving that at scale is a different challenge from qualifying an individual missile.

The same uncertainty applies to the systems themselves. The proposal's logic depends on inexpensive weapons being useful against sophisticated Russian integrated air-defence and electronic-warfare environments. The briefing provides no verified performance data that would allow a definitive assessment of how Anthem, Flamingo or BARS would perform under those conditions.

What is clear is why Berlin is willing to take the risk.

A high-intensity conflict creates a different definition of sophistication. A missile that is cheaper, easier to replace and available in large numbers may have strategic value that cannot be captured by comparing its technical specifications with those of a more expensive weapon.

The procurement rules are changing too

The most disruptive element of the German proposal may ultimately have little to do with missile range.

If Ukrainian manufacturers and venture-backed defence companies can move directly into procurement pipelines alongside established European contractors, the boundary between the traditional defence industry and the technology sector begins to weaken.

Covenant Industries illustrates the change. The US-Israeli start-up was founded in 2024 and backed by major venture-capital firms. Its Anthem missile underwent a joint US-Moroccan test flight at the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center in Tan-Tan earlier this month.

For European defence establishments, the significance lies in the model: private capital financing hardware that governments can potentially procure at scale and field far faster than conventional major weapons programmes.

That also introduces unresolved questions over intellectual property, export controls and industrial ownership. They become particularly complicated when a weapon is jointly developed by NATO members, a Ukrainian manufacturer outside NATO and private investors.

Germany's plan therefore reaches beyond the Bundeswehr. It tests whether Europe's defence institutions can adapt their procurement systems as quickly as their militaries are adapting their doctrines.

The emerging architecture is neither purely European nor purely American, neither dominated by traditional defence giants nor entirely built around start-ups. It is a hybrid system shaped by the immediate lessons of Ukraine and the longer technological ambitions of Germany, Britain and their allies.

For Moscow, the more consequential change is geographical: the military rear is becoming less secure. For NATO, it is industrial: long-range precision weapons are beginning to move from a small, highly specialised segment of the defence market towards a layered production model in which quantity, speed and replaceability matter almost as much as technical excellence.