COLOGNE, Germany — The German government this week notified Pentagon leaders of an interest to buy the U.S. Army’s Typhon missile launcher system, which can fire missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers, while a European initiative to make such weapons continues to ripen.
Interest in the Lockheed Martin-made launcher comes as defense officials in Berlin await a final call by the Trump administration to honor a Biden-era agreement under which American missiles are to bolster Germany’s deterrence posture starting in 2026.
Those long-range fires capabilities, launched via Typhon, are to include SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles, plus “developmental hypersonic weapons,” said a July 2024 German-U.S. statement, released on the sidelines of NATO’s 75-year anniversary summit in Washington.
Boris Pistorius, speaking to reporters in Washington on July 14, said missile-stationing plan’s fate was still iffy, as U.S. defense leaders re-assess the American military footprint in Europe.
“I’m very confident that the announcement will remain in place,” he said following a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “But a final decision is still outstanding.”
In that context, Berlin’s interest in Typhon could be seen as a gesture to keep the long-range strike plan, devised as a conventional counterstrike option in the event of a Russian attack, on track in the first place.
Either way, European nations currently lack the weapons range that Typhon would bring to the continent, according to Pistorius.
Countries have banded together to develop such weapons under the European Long-range Strike Approach, or ELSA, but those capabilities will take seven to 10 years to field, he said.
Sebastian Sprenger is associate editor for Europe at Defense News, reporting on the state of the defense market in the region, and on U.S.-Europe cooperation and multi-national investments in defense and global security. Previously he served as managing editor for Defense News. He is based in Cologne, Germany.
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