US to deploy long-range weapons in Germany
The US will deploy long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 onwards, according to statements by the governments of both countries. These weapons, including SM-6 and Tomahawk systems, were banned on the continent until Washington scrapped a key Cold War-era treaty in 2019.
According to a joint statement released by the White House, the US will “begin phased deployments of Multi-Domain Task Force long-range firepower capabilities in Germany in 2026, as part of a plan to permanently deploy these capabilities into the future.”
The statement came after talks between US and German officials at the annual NATO summit in Washington on July 10.
The weapons systems deployed to Germany will include SM-6 air defense missiles, which have a range of up to 460 km, and Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are said to be able to strike targets more than 2,500 km away.
The “hypersonic weapons under development” will also be based in Germany and will have “significantly longer ranges than current land-based weapons in Europe,” the White House said.
According to RT, the US has yet to successfully create a hypersonic weapon and has canceled all hypersonic projects since the first successful test in 2017.
Ground-launched missiles with ranges between 500km and 5,500km were banned from European soil under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
Along with the START-I and START-II treaties, the INF Treaty helped defuse nuclear tensions in Europe after the West and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear war during NATO's Able Archer military exercise in 1983.
The US withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, with the State Department alleging that some Russian cruise missiles violated the agreement. Moscow denied this, and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned then-US President Donald Trump that scrapping the treaty would have “the most serious consequences”.
Russia has continued to abide by the treaty and imposed a moratorium on the development of missiles it banned, RT reported. However, earlier this month, Putin said that the Russian defense industry would continue to develop such weapons, citing the “hostile actions” of the United States.
“We now know that the United States not only produces these missile systems, but also sends them to Europe, to Denmark, to use them in exercises,” Putin explained at the time.
US and Danish forces trained with SM-6 missiles last September, while the Pentagon deployed the Typhon Weapon System – which can fire both SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles – to the Philippines in April.
