European Deep Strike: ELSA, Tomahawk and Typhon in Germany, PrSM, ATACMS and Long-Range Fires

A running ledger of Europe's long-range conventional strike build-out — Germany's Tomahawk and Typhon purchase, the Rheinmetall–Lockheed ATACMS line, UK PrSM, ELSA's implementation groups and the sovereign cruise-missile field — updated as each programme moves from letter of intent to contract, and as delivery years slip.

Why this page exists

Europe's long-range strike build-out is not one programme but a dozen running in parallel — a German Tomahawk purchase, an ATACMS line moving to Lower Saxony, a British buy-in to an American ballistic round, a six-nation architecture reorganising its own governance, and a field of national cruise missiles chasing the same low-cost, mass-produced tier Ukraine proved out. Each strand generates its own announcement, its own memorandum, its own summit photograph. None of the coverage sits in one place with the dates, the numbers and the distinction between a signed contract and a stated intention kept straight.

What follows tracks who has bought what, at what range and price, on what date, and against which document — letter of intent, memorandum of understanding, or binding contract — rather than treating an industry-forum signing as equivalent to a delivered capability. It updates as programmes move: a converted memorandum, a notified contract, a missed approval month, a delivery year that moves right. The prevailing reading is that Europe is building sovereign long-range reach in a year when no US ground-launched intermediate-range missiles are stationed on the continent; what would confirm or weaken that is whether each programme moves from letter of intent to signed contract.

State of play

Germany's Tomahawk bridge and the four-track hedge

The 2024 Biden–Scholz agreement would have rotated a US Army multi-domain task force with Typhon launchers, Tomahawks and SM-6 through Germany free of charge from 2026 — no US ground-based intermediate-range missiles had been stationed in Europe since the INF Treaty removed them by 1991. Politico reported on 4 June 2026 that the Pentagon was set to cancel it, citing fear of Russian retaliation against precision missiles based in the centre of the continent and stockpile depletion after the Iran war. Chancellor Friedrich Merz answered by buying the capability outright: on 9 July he told the Bundestag Germany would acquire and station Tomahawks itself, after Boris Pistorius and Pete Hegseth signed a letter of intent on 7 July committing Washington to formal export approval in August. Reporting puts the buy at up to 400 Block Vb rounds, worth more than USD 1 billion, reaching beyond 1,600 kilometres and fired from Lockheed Martin's ground-based Typhon launcher.

The August approval month passed with nothing published. What Berlin has instead, as of mid-September, is a statement of intent signed by Pistorius and Hegseth at the Pentagon on 15 September on producing US equipment in Germany where American capacity falls short — a text that names no system, company or date — and a letter of request for the launchers submitted in early September, with one FMS step from August still outstanding. The same day, Welt and Politico reported internal ministry documents putting the first Tomahawk at 2031 rather than the 2029 the plan assumed, and the Typhon launchers at roughly twice the EUR 200 million budgeted; Pistorius called the timelines offered too late and said the purchase continues. The supply side explains the slip: on 17 August the US Navy handed Raytheon a USD 22.9 billion, seven-year contract to lift Tomahawk output from about 60 to more than 1,000 rounds a year, and Germany queues behind the US services and the Iran war's consumption. Berlin is not waiting on that queue alone. POLITICO reported on 18 June a four-track hedge: the Typhon/Tomahawk buy, low-cost cruise missiles — Fire Point's Flamingo FP-5, the Bars drone-missile, Covenant's Anthem — targeted for 2027, a high-end cruise missile with Britain by 2032, and a UK-partnered hypersonic glide vehicle by 2035; ministry planning documents reported on 22 August size the long-range line at roughly EUR 12 billion from 2027. No German contract exists in the fast track, but the fast track no longer waits for one: Covenant confirmed on 9 September an Anthem line in north Leipzig producing from the first quarter of 2027, with one unnamed European customer already signed.

Ground-launched fires: ATACMS, PrSM and the Unterlüß build-out

At the Ankara summit's industry forum on 7 July 2026, Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin signed a memorandum toward what the companies call the first ATACMS production line outside the United States, at Rheinmetall's Unterlüß plant in Lower Saxony. Rocket-motor and component work could start as early as 2027, scaling toward full output over the following years on the up-to-300-kilometre ballistic round. It is markedly less than Rheinmetall's chief executive Armin Papperger had sought a year earlier — licensed European production of the Patriot PAC-3 interceptor — which the same package reduced to a shared maintenance depot among the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. On Lockheed's second-quarter earnings call on 23 July, chief executive Jim Taiclet supplied the mechanism: moving ATACMS to Germany frees roughly two-thirds of the Camden, Arkansas plant for PrSM, the longer-ranged round the US Army is itself buying to replace ATACMS.

Britain took the other end of the same American family. On 7 July, the same day as the Unterlüß memorandum, London committed GBP 190 million (about USD 254 million) from its Defence Investment Plan to join the US–Australia Precision Strike Missile programme — a 500-kilometre Lockheed Martin round fired from the British Army's existing M270A2 launchers, with first deliveries possible in 2027. The buy-in is workshare and an AUKUS Pillar 2 link, not an off-the-shelf purchase: Britain builds into the round Washington is scaling up as Germany manufactures the one it is retiring. PrSM's Increment 1 variant reaches the range the weapon gained once the INF Treaty's cap lapsed, and fires from launchers the British Army already operates, which is the point of the buy — a deliverable round rather than a development programme. London's separate, larger Deep Precision Strike initiative, unveiled the following day with a dozen European partners, is the sovereign-design ambition; the PrSM cheque is what a fielded 500-kilometre round looks like in the meantime, while the ambition matures.

Europe's sovereign cruise-missile field: ELSA, Trinity House and the low-cost tier

France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the UK's European Long-Range Strike Approach, founded on a 12 February 2026 letter of intent on one-way effectors, moved on 18 June from a requirement-setting forum into eight standalone Implementation Groups, each run by a lead nation carrying its own cost — three for ground-launched strike by range band, one for low-cost one-way-attack effectors above 500 kilometres, and four covering airborne early warning, long-range SEAD, air-launched strike and a Euro Multi Missile Launcher. Under that umbrella, national programmes are converting fast: France picked the Safran–MBDA Thundart over HIMARS on 15 June for its LRU successor, ITAR-free and reaching 150 kilometres now, 500 by 2035, and the DGA notified the contract on 10 September — 26 systems before 2030, up to 26 more, value undisclosed; Rheinmetall and Destinus advanced the Ruta Block 3 — over 2,000 kilometres, up to 250 kilogrammes, final assembly in Germany — at Eurosatory on 17 June; Poland's PGZ and Anduril signed on 6 July to build the Barracuda-500M, over 925 kilometres, at Bydgoszcz; and Helsing and Eurenco agreed on 17 June to develop a sovereign warhead for the HX-2 loitering strike drone.

The Bundeswehr's own low-cost tier, OWE 500+, is assessing four firms — Destinus, Diehl Defence, Helsing and MBDA Deutschland — against a target price of roughly EUR 100,000 a round beyond 500 kilometres and a force able to fire more than 100 a day, with flight demonstrations due by autumn 2026; only Destinus's Kryla publicly matches the spec today. On 8 July, twelve allies led by Britain pledged USD 50.66 billion over ten years to the Deep Precision Strike Capability Investment Initiative, bundling the UK–German Trinity House programme (stealth and hypersonic weapons beyond 2,000 kilometres, GBP 770 million over four years), the UK–France–Italy Stratus successor to Storm Shadow, and Britain's PrSM buy-in under one financing umbrella. Germany is reported to carry roughly half the initiative's cost — Britain designed the successor family and pays into it; Germany buys American Tomahawks as the interim bridge and pays into the same fund.

Platforms and exotica: A400M carriers, MARS 3/EuroPULS and the railgun

Berlin is in industry talks to buy 15 to 20 new Airbus A400M transports, replacing its 16 oldest airframes while holding the 53-aircraft fleet's size and adding a role: launching cruise missiles or drones through the rear ramp as a stand-off deep-strike platform, with MBDA Deutschland developing a longer-range Taurus variant for it. The Bundestag budget committee lifted the relevant commitment authority to EUR 3.59 billion through 2032 in early July, from roughly EUR 1.4 billion (reported by Handelsblatt on 14 July). Separately, Germany's rocket-artillery architecture is scaling in parallel to the US GMLRS stack: KNDS and Elbit Systems Land formed the EuroPULS GmbH joint venture on 26 March 2026, and Hartpunkt reported on 3 March that the Bundeswehr is preparing a framework contract for up to 500 MARS 3/EuroPULS launchers, roughly half for Germany and the rest open to allies at the same terms, alongside framework munitions contracts running from 150-kilometre rockets toward 500-kilometre missiles by the early 2030s. A fourth German stand-off track opened at sea on the night of 1–2 September, when the F125 frigate Sachsen-Anhalt fired two IAI LORA quasi-ballistic missiles from canisters on its flight deck in the North Atlantic, to about 430 kilometres; the navy says procurement preparations will be advanced, but there is no requirement, quantity or budget line, and LORA appears nowhere in the ministry's EUR 12 billion planning documents.

Further down the technology curve, the Franco-German Institute of Saint-Louis fired its electromagnetic railgun in open-range free flight on 29 June 2026 at Baldersheim, the launcher's move out of a closed test cell — 25-millimetre projectiles beyond Mach 5 under loads above 100,000 g — feeding the EU's PILUM and THEMA projects toward a roughly 30-kilometre land demonstrator around 2028. And Britain cut the other way on 3 July, dropping the Meteor air-to-air missile's mid-life upgrade to fund the pre-concept Future Air Superiority Effectors programme instead, trading an increment on a fielded weapon for a successor with no published budget, timeline or supplier yet.

Key numbers

The ledger

Newest first, one dated development per entry; where a Großwald piece covers it, the entry links to it.

The contrarian read

What to watch

Germany's Tomahawk export approval

The August month named in the 7 July letter of intent passed without an approval or DSCA notification. Pistorius said on 16 September a letter of request for the Typhon launchers went in early September, one FMS step expected in August is outstanding and another is due shortly. A DSCA notice would attach quantity, value and delivery years — and test the 2031 earliest-delivery estimate in the internal documents.

The ATACMS memorandum becomes a contract

Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin signed an MOU on 7 July, not a binding joint-venture agreement. Watch for a definitive contract and the actual start of rocket-motor production at Unterlüß, targeted for as early as 2027.

The 500-launcher MARS 3/EuroPULS framework

The Bundeswehr is due to seek parliamentary approval in the second half of 2026 for a framework contract covering up to 500 launchers. A Bundestag vote — or its absence — will show whether the scale-up is funded or aspirational.

Raytheon's delivery cadence against the German queue

The USD 22.9bn Navy contract ramps Tomahawk output toward 1,000+ a year, and the Army's 133,014-round GMLRS survey (white papers 1 Sep) tests whether a second rocket source or the incumbent's expansion is in view; neither document allocates output between US replenishment after the Iran war and Europe's M270/HIMARS and Tomahawk customers. Watch whether Germany's rounds arrive on a 2026–2029 timeline or slip behind US restocking.

Thundart's joint venture and first-system date

The DGA notification of 10 September fixes 26 systems before 2030; the Safran–MBDA joint venture is due in January 2027 and the contract value is undisclosed. A first-system date and the 500-kilometre second phase are the next markers.

LORA from a requirement to a programme

The 2 September firing from Sachsen-Anhalt ran under the OPEX experimentation series. Watch for a navy requirement, a EUR 25 million submission or a budget line naming the round, launcher and ship class — without one the test stays a demonstration.

Related Großwald positions

• Russian drone and missile incursions into NATO territory — the running record
• European air and missile defence — who is buying what
• SAFE — the €150 billion EU defence loan, country by country
• Germany's defence procurement — budget, 25-million approvals, BAAINBw reform
• European ammunition and energetics capacity
• German frigate programmes — F123, F126 to MEKO A-200, F127
• Baltic Sea security — shadow fleet, seabed, spoofing, interdiction rules
• NATO exercises 2026 — the complete guide