Berlin Will Examine Macron's SAMP/T NG Co-Production Offer — the Obstacle: a Second System Beside Patriot
Kassel, 21 July 2026
Key points
- Speaking at KNDS Deutschland's Kassel plant, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius answered the offer Emmanuel Macron made at the Franco-German council in Brühl on 17 July — co-production of the SAMP/T NG air-defence system, jointly with Italy: Germany should take it "very, very seriously" and examine it "very concretely and in substance"
- He named the obstacle in the same breath: it is "not straightforwardly, and above all not easily, imaginable to work with two different systems within the armed forces" — German ground-based air defence's middle tier is built on Patriot
- That incumbency now includes production: COMLOG, the MBDA Deutschland-Raytheon joint venture, holds a EUR 5.1 billion NSPA order for up to 1,000 GEM-T Patriot interceptors, with a new line at Schrobenhausen and first German-built rounds due end-2027 or early 2028
- Observers cited by Hartpunkt see the easiest entry as MBDA Deutschland taking a share in manufacturing the Aster 30 B1NT — the SAMP/T NG's anti-ballistic round, which passed system-level qualification firings in December 2025
Germany has given its first answer to Emmanuel Macron's offer of SAMP/T NG co-production: Boris Pistorius called the proposal welcome, said Berlin should examine it "very concretely and in substance" — and named the cost himself, a second air-defence system beside Patriot in one force.
The offer landed on 17 July at the Franco-German defence and security council at Brühl: Macron proposed advancing the new-generation SAMP/T — the Eurosam system Hartpunkt describes as the only European-built ground-based air defence with a capability against ballistic missiles — in co-production with Germany and Italy, the system's co-owner at programme level. Pistorius, speaking to press at KNDS Deutschland in Kassel on Tuesday, called it a thoroughly tricky question, welcomed the proposal in principle, and committed to a serious examination while declining to predict its result. On a horizon of ten years and more, he added, "a great deal is imaginable."
The near-term arithmetic is what makes the question tricky. Germany's ground-based air defence between the IRIS-T layer and the exo-atmospheric Arrow 3 runs on Patriot — batteries, training pipeline, and now a production stake: COMLOG, MBDA Deutschland's joint venture with Raytheon, holds the EUR 5.1 billion NSPA order for up to 1,000 GEM-T interceptors, with a new line standing up at Schrobenhausen and first German-built rounds due around end-2027. SAMP/T NG competes for exactly that tier — and Diehl's in-development IRIS-T SLX reaches toward the same envelope from below. Hence the observer reading Hartpunkt carries: the workable entry is not the launcher but the round — a German manufacturing share in the Aster 30 B1NT, which completed system-level qualification firings in France and Italy in December 2025.
The examination is checkable. A B1NT production role for MBDA Deutschland would buy Germany an option on the European interceptor round without displacing a single Patriot battery; the next German ground-based air-defence order placed on Patriot alone would mean the answer was no. As Großwald Signal No. 107 framed it, the ten-year horizon pushes the launcher question into the next planning decade — what stays live now is the round.
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