USA plans to station hypersonic long-range weapons in Germany

• The USA announced that it would begin stationing new long-range weapons in Germany in 2026.
• Capabilities include SM-6, Tomahawk and hypersonic weapons under development.
• The war in Ukraine has shown that more options for a deep strike are needed.

The US has just announced plans to station new long-range weapons in European ally Germany in 2026.

The planned The deployment of new weapons systems in Germany is a consequence of the collapse of the INF Treaty and comes at a time when NATO is learning important lessons from the war in Ukraine. One of these is the value of long-range ground-based strikes.

The United States and Germany released a statement on Wednesday about the upcoming “episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of their Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for a permanent stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

The Allies wrote that “these long-range conventional fire units will include SM-6 and Tomahawk weapons, as well as hypersonic weapons under development that have significantly greater range than current land-based firearms in Europe.”

The US withdrawal from the INF Treaty in 2019, which Moscow was responsible for after Washington accused it of violating it, enabled the US to begin developing and deploying new land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometres.

Since then, the U.S. has been pushing ahead with the development of systems such as the Typhon, which uses a ground-based launcher to fire the Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) and the Tomahawk, as well as hypersonic missiles such as the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, which is in the works but has faced some delays and funding issues.

The Typhon system, also known as Mid-Range Capability, was recently deployed as part of US military exercises in the Philippines.

The war in Ukraine has shown the importance of the ability to conduct effective long-range attacks.

Russia has used its arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles – often in combination with disposable attack drones – to attack Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. Western-supplied tactical missile systems (ATACMs) and Storm Shadow cruise missiles enable Ukraine to hit targets in Russian-occupied territories such as Crimea.

Fabian Hoffman, a doctoral student at the Oslo Nuclear Project, explained in a commentary on War on the Rocks last year that “the ability to attack targets in operational and strategic depth critically enables the execution of offensive and defensive maneuvers and can shape the conditions for victory on the battlefield.”

However, he said: “European states have long ignored the trend towards long-range attacks and precision strikes in modern warfare.”

However, new efforts are now underway, and as Timothy Wright and Zuzanna Gwadera of the International Institute of Strategic Studies recently wrote, “NATO member states are reversing decades of inventory cuts in surface-to-surface missiles and rockets by acquiring new capabilities.”