Missiles on the move: Why US long-range missiles in Germany are just the tip of the iceberg

On July 10, during the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., the US and German governments announced a plan to deploy US long-range missiles in Germany by 2026. The announcement, which caught many members of the German parliament off guard and sparked a public debate about its potential consequences, prompted criticism of the government’s lack of communication and concerns about escalation risks. In response, parliamentary state secretaries at the Federal Foreign Office felt compelled to send an explanatory letter to the parliamentary defense and foreign affairs committees to justify the decision. Any hope for a swift end of discussions, however, seems premature—and rightly so.

Germany is gradually awakening from three decades of slumber in security and defense policy. Yet the current debate remains polarized. Many welcome the US missile deployment in Germany as a straightforward measure that would improve deterrence and defense against Russia, but they appear to be doing so without thoroughly examining the practical and security implications of this decision. Others reject it outright, seemingly driven more by ideology than by analysis. Both positions, however, miss an understanding of the larger strategic context: the beginning of a new missile age in Europe. The future deployment of US ground-launched intermediate-range missiles, while significant, is just one element of this broader transformation of the security architecture of the continent.

US missiles in Germany. The one-paragraph US-German declaration provides for the future deployment of three US conventional missile systems: long-range hypersonic weapons known as Dark Eagle, Standard Missile 6 (SM-6), and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

The novel Dark Eagle hypersonic weapon has been undergoing testing until recently. It reportedly has a flight range of 1,725 miles (2,775 kilometers) and can reach a maximum speed of Mach 17, that is, 17 times the speed of sound. Initially scheduled for deployment in 2023, it only recently completed its first successful end-to-end flight test, however. According to the US Defense Department, the first battery could now be delivered within a year.

By contrast, the SM-6 Block IB variant and the Tomahawk cruise missile are land-based adaptations of previously existing sea-launched systems. The SM-6 Block IB has a reported range of up to 290 miles (460 kilometers) in its primary roles as an anti-ship and anti-air missile, but due to its large rocket booster it might be able to target land sites way beyond that distance. The Tomahawk cruise missile has a range of over 1,600 kilometers but flies at considerably lower speeds—up to approximately 900 kilometers per hour. Both missiles will be launched from the Typhon mobile launcher, which has already been deployed this year for exercises on the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and in the Philippines.

The three missile systems are assigned to the 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force, a US Army unit created in September 2021 and headquartered at Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden in southwestern Germany. The United States currently has five such multi-domain task forces worldwide that integrate land, air, sea, space, and cyber forces to flexibly engage enemy targets. Of those, at least three focus on potential operations in the Pacific region; the 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany is the only one to serve operations in Europe and Africa. The main objective of these task forces is to penetrate complex anti-access and area denial zones in all potential theaters of war, where adversaries seek to restrict access and movement.

Offensive strategies for defense. Even though it surprised many, the US deployment decision is neither a hasty nor an unexpected move. Rather, it is a calculated element of a long-term deterrence and warfighting strategy. The deployment of long-range missiles in Germany supports the US Army’s 2030 vision for maintaining superiority against near-peer competitors and aligns with the “Joint Warfighting Concept” that defines the strategic doctrine for US military operations. The decision also aligns with NATO’s deterrence and defense strategy, which emphasizes horizontal escalation: That is, in wartime, NATO members would defend beyond the immediate attack site and strike elsewhere to apply pressure and divert the forces of the adversary.

Standoff missile systems serve two key purposes.

First, they are used to neutralize the adversary’s ability to launch its own standoff missiles by targeting launchers or systems responsible for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. By destroying air defense, anti-ship, and surface-to-surface missile launchers, long-range fires would also enable NATO to deploy its own forces more safely via air and sea lift as well as on the ground.

Second, these systems can also target industrial infrastructure, key domestic defense sites, supply chains, and transportation nodes in a conventional war of attrition, thereby inhibiting the adversary to continue its war effort.

Ideally, the strategic objective is to compel the adversary to cease his aggression. In the nuclear age, however, an alternative scenario exists: A nuclear power can escalate further in order to coerce the adversary to back down and secure more favorable terms for ending the war. This is particularly true of Russia. Unlike during the Cold War, when NATO faced the Warsaw Pact in Europe, Russia’s military is now conventionally inferior to that of the West. Meanwhile, the current Russian nuclear doctrine includes provisions for using nuclear weapons in response to conventional ballistic missile attacks. The central challenge, therefore, is to deter Russian nuclear first use, as Vipin Narang, the Acting US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy notes.

A new missile age. In the German debate since the announcement of the planned US missile deployment, however, there are no substantial considerations about war-fighting options, doctrines, and associated nuclear escalation scenarios. Instead, those in favor of the deployment have primarily argued that it will enhance deterrence against Russia, filling an important perceived “capability gap.” Proponents view these missiles as a general response to Russian nuclear-capable missile systems, some of which have been deployed to the Kaliningrad Oblast, including ground-launched Iskander 9M723 ballistic missiles with a range of 500 kilometers and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles that are launched from forward deployed MiG-31 fighter jets and can reach targets that are more than 2,000 kilometers away.

Over the past decade, Russia has significantly improved its arsenal of standoff missiles. In doing so, Moscow has aimed to catch up with the United States, which has enjoyed a wide competitive advantage in this area since the early 1990s, leveraging advancements in missile guidance technology, communications systems, and sensor networks. Russian defense analysts and planners had previously advocated for similar investments, however, a lack of funds and other pressing political priorities made such development impossible. This began to change in the mid-2000s, but the decisive push came only after the five-day war against Georgia in 2008 drastically demonstrated Russian military weaknesses.

In its full-scale war against Ukraine since February 2022, Russia has displayed the success of this catch-up process in a most tragic way. It has verifiably used a diverse set of air-, sea-, and ground-launched missiles—many of which are based on the Iskander 9M723—to strike targets. The Russian military even used anti-ship and air defense missiles in land-attack mode. Despite this campaign, however, Russia has been unable to conduct missile strikes with the same intensity as the United States did 20 years ago in its wars against Iraq. Shortage in numbers might also explain why Russia has opted to use ground-launched KN-23 ballistic missiles from North Korea, and to import Zolfaghar ballistic missiles from Iran, with reported ranges of up to 700 kilometers.

For European NATO members, however, this situation provides little comfort, because they have so far mostly relied on the United States to provide standoff missile capabilities in a crisis. The bulk of the current European arsenal is provided by limited numbers of air-launched cruise missiles with maximum ranges of about 500 kilometers, including the Storm Shadow / SCALP EG in France and the United Kingdom, and the Taurus KEPD 350 in Germany and Spain. For this reason, other European states, including Finland, Poland and the Netherlands, have already started to procure additional US air launched cruise missiles, in particular the joint air-to-surface standoff missile with an extended range (AGM-158B-2 JASSM-ER) of reportedly 1,000 kilometers for the F-16 and F-35 fighter jets.

During the NATO summit, Germany, France, Poland, and Italy have also emphasized their willingness to further improve their own standoff missile capabilities by signing a letter of intent for what they are calling the “European Long-Range Strike Approach.” The future parameters of this new system are still unknown, but France has reportedly offered to use its own naval cruise missile—the Missile de Croisière Naval with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers—as a possible basis for the common project. Meanwhile, Germany and Norway are working on developing the 3SM Tyrfing, a supersonic, long-range anti-ship cruise missile that is expected to be operational by 2035.

The procurement and development of these and other systems over the next decade heralds the beginning of a new missile age in Europe.

The future deployment of US ground-launched intermediate-range missiles in Germany, while certainly among the most significant developments, is consequently just one element of this broader transformation. It is mirrored by parallel efforts to improve NATO’s integrated air and missile defense by acquiring systems that cover different interception layers including the German IRIS-T SLM, the US Patriot, and the Israeli Arrow-3 systems. These developments have resulted in an arms competition on multiple fronts and with no end in sight.

Addressing drivers of escalation. The arms competition around new missile systems unfolds through various action-reaction cycles between states, as they adjust their force postures for different contingencies across multiple theaters.

While Russia’s military build-up still primarily points to US capabilities, European NATO members focus on countering Russian capabilities on their own. Despite deploying missiles to Germany, the United States remains predominantly focused on China, whose own missile build-up shapes US concepts of global military operations. The shifting dynamics in the Pacific region, however, also affect Russian military security in the Far East. This entanglement has significant implications for escalation management.

The proliferation of stand-off weapons and air and missile defense systems among European NATO members is driven by regional deterrence and conventional warfighting strategies. Likewise, forward-deployed missiles provide the United States with additional options in regional war scenarios. By contrast, however, Russia views these capabilities also as strategic threats that could potentially undermine its nuclear deterrence force. In a crisis, Russia could be tempted to pre-emptively target these systems or decide to escalate the conflict early on. For European NATO members, in turn, nearly all Russian missile systems are strategically relevant because their use—at least potentially—could pose an existential threat to them.

These structural factors of escalation won’t be easily resolved unless radical geopolitical changes or complete disarmament efforts are engaged. Meanwhile, however, these factors must be effectively managed to control military escalation between nuclear powers, even if war were to break out. Addressing these challenges requires that public debates in Germany and other European countries go beyond a discussion over some individual weapon systems and deterrence rhetoric. Instead, European analysts should contribute to developing alternative military doctrines, warfighting strategies, and operational employment options all aimed at providing defense at lower risks of nuclear escalation in the region, similar to what US analysts have proposed vis-a-vis China. An informed debate can help choose the right trade-offs to ease some of the challenges of the new missile age and prevent worst-case scenarios from materializing.