The guided-missile destroyer USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) launches tomahawk missiles. (US Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)
WASHINGTON — Come 2026, the US Army can begin deploying some of its new, longer-range munitions to Germany under a new agreement the two nations inked ahead of the NATO summit.
“The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force [MDTF] in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future,” the White House announced in a statement today.
“When fully developed, these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe,” it added.
The move comes after Washington withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 and was freed to develop and field ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers.
Over the intervening years, the US Army has been working on several new capabilities within those ranges, but as they come online, Washington needs to pen deals with countries like Germany in order for units to deploy with the new weapons. If the plan proceeds as it is now, at least three new Army weapons could be bound for the European nation in 2026 including:
- Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) initially planned to hit targets within the 500-kilometer range;
- A future Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) designed to hit targets 2,776-kilometers away; and
- A Mid-Range Capability, now known as Typhon, that uses a ground-based launcher to fire Raytheon’s existing SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk to hit targets between the previous two ranges.
So far, Typhon has been the only known weapon deployed abroad and was first done so with soldiers from the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force on a turn out to the Philippines earlier this year. If all goes as planned, the PrSM could be the next of the trio fielded and make it into soldiers hands later this year. However, the service is working to get hypersonic weapon development back on track and it’s not clear when the missile might be ready for use.
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