Signal No. 147 · Tomahawk, earliest 2031
Pistorius and Hegseth signed a statement of intent on Tuesday on making US defence equipment in Germany where American capacity falls short, and Welt and Politico report internal documents putting the first German Tomahawks at 2031 against a 2029 plan; Pistorius said the timelines come too late.
DEZATLSTK Pistorius and Hegseth sign a statement of intent on US equipment made in Germany; internal documents put the first Tomahawk at 2031 against a 2029 plan
hartpunkt 16 Sep · t-online (Welt/Politico) 15 Sep · Reuters 15 Sep · BMVg 16 Sep · dpa 15 Sep · US Department of War 15 Sep · RTTNews 16 Sep · Großwald 4 Jun · Großwald 18 Jun · Großwald 17 Aug · Großwald 12 Jun · Signal No. 114 · Signal No. 135 · Signal No. 146
Welt reported on Tuesday morning, citing internal government documents held by its partner Politico, that the first German Tomahawks are now expected in 2031 at the earliest; the Bundeswehr had planned to field the weapon in 2029, and the documents attribute the slip to consumption in the Iran war and limited production capacity, adding that when Germany could receive the quantity it needs "cannot currently be reliably assessed". US estimates for the Typhon launcher run at about double the EUR 200 million Berlin had assumed; the internal assessment recommends continuing with both. Pistorius said on Wednesday that "the course is set": the letter of request for the launchers, the formal foreign-military-sales step after the request Berlin lodged in July 2025, went in at the start of September, a further step is due "shortly", Germany wants both the ground-launched and the ship-launched round, and officials are to assess which components German industry could supply. He told the Americans the current timelines "come too late" for Germany, "and this was noted".
The statement of intent Boris Pistorius and Pete Hegseth signed at the Pentagon on Tuesday covers licensed manufacturing and sustainment of defence equipment, supply chains and a review of technology-transfer rules. The defence ministry's account is that it allows defence goods to be made in Germany when US capacity is insufficient; the Pentagon's is that it aligns the department's acquisition strategy with Germany's procurement acceleration act. Reuters reports that the details, and the planned Tomahawk purchase, "still needed to be worked out". No published account of the text names a weapon, a company or a date.
Three dates were already on the record. On 4 June Politico reported that the Pentagon would cancel the US Army's own Tomahawk rotation to Germany agreed in 2024, citing stocks spent over Iran; the planning documents of 18 June, written after that, put a German initial capability at 2029; and the letter of intent of 7 July committed Washington to export approval in August, a month that ended without it. The supply side is also on record: Raytheon builds about 60 Tomahawks a year and holds a USD 22.9 billion, seven-year Navy contract from 17 August to ramp past 1,000; Germany's request is for up to 400. The other system on Berlin's list on Tuesday, the PAC-3, got nothing on the record beyond the GEM-T co-production already running at Schrobenhausen; Pistorius named Patriot missile production in Germany as the existing base and named no variant. Politico's August documents budgeted about EUR 12 billion for long-range strike from 2027.
On the American presence, dpa reports that Germany has offered NATO ships, combat aircraft and unmanned systems to replace US capabilities so far guaranteed in Europe, against the cuts allies were briefed on in June: US fighters in the Force Model from about 150 to 100, maritime patrol aircraft from 26 to 15 and all eight tankers. Pistorius raised the Pentagon's force-posture review with Hegseth and proposed a road map so that no gaps open as US capabilities are withdrawn.
Signal › The statement's substance is production in Germany where American capacity is short. The Tomahawk is the capacity-short item, and it has never been built outside the United States; the PAC-3 has been built under licence in Japan since 2005, without its seeker, which Mitsubishi Heavy Industries still imports. The instrument fits the PAC-3, on which nothing was said, and not the Tomahawk, on which a date was. The 2029 plan was written in June after the US Army's own rotation was cancelled, so 2031 means no Tomahawk on German soil before then, American or German. Raytheon's ramp to 1,000 a year serves the Navy contract first, and what moves Germany's date is its place in the foreign-military-sales queue, which needs a signed letter of offer and acceptance. The launcher request is in; the export approval promised for August is not, and no letter of offer is on the record.
INTDIN Parliament adopts the Defence Readiness Omnibus: permits for defence plants decided in 42 working days, granted by default if the deadline lapses
Eunews 16 Sep · The Sofia Globe 16 Sep · Renew Europe 16 Sep · European Parliament 16 Sep · European Parliament (legislative train)
The plenary in Strasbourg adopted the three files of the Defence Readiness Omnibus on Wednesday, on texts agreed with the Council on 10 June. The permit regulation passed 540 to 105: a national authority has 42 working days from confirming an application is complete to decide on a defence-readiness project, may extend twice by up to 60 days for complex cases, so at most 102 working days, and if it does not decide in time the permit is granted. The transfers and procurement file: a general transfer licence for defence products moving inside the Union, published by each member state, framework agreements extended from seven to ten years and higher thresholds. The investment file, passed by a similar margin: revised European Defence Fund criteria, wider eligibility for small firms, testing costs in Ukraine made eligible, and "duly justified" derogations from EU environmental and chemicals law for defence purposes.
Lucia Yar, the Renew rapporteur on the permit file: "If a national authority misses the deadline, the permit is granted, so no administration can leave a project waiting in silence."
Signal › The clock starts at confirmation of completeness, which stays in the authority's hands, and the environmental derogation is a member-state option, not a Union rule. Both are where the 42 days will be tested: an authority that wants time takes it before the clock starts. A plant permitted by lapse rather than by decision, and a capital issuing a derogation, are what would show either being used.
INTGRZ Von der Leyen proposes a European Article 4, a leaders' Security Council with Canada, Norway, Ukraine and the UK, and a strategic-enablers instrument; no dates
European Commission (via EEAS) 16 Sep · Großwald 23 Sep 2025 · Großwald 24 Apr · Großwald 7 Sep · Signal No. 146 · Großwald 12 Jun
In the State of the Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen said Europe "needs its own counter-hybrid playbook" and "a consensus on how to respond to certain incidents. Those which fall below armed aggression but clearly threaten our national security. I believe it is time for Europe's own Article 4 – or an Emergency Security Protocol. When triggered by one Member State, all Member States would convene. To coordinate a European response." She cited Denmark, Lithuania and Poland and called the Leipzig airport drone "an attack using military-grade material, carried out by Russian operatives on European soil". The protocol is to come in a security strategy with Kaja Kallas, undated. She also set out a leaders' format on the continent's security "with partners like Canada, Norway, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and others", a European Instrument for Strategic Enablers covering air and missile defence, strategic transport, air-to-air refuelling, space and cyber, a modular missile-defence system with Ukraine named Freyja, and joint projects with Ukrainian companies from SAFE money not yet allocated. None carries a figure, a legal base or a date.
The speech does not mention Article 42.7, the Union's own mutual-assistance clause, for which the April summit in Nicosia tasked the Commission and Kallas's service with an operational blueprint covering hybrid and conventional cases; no delivery date was set then and none has been published since. Kallas withdrew her High-Level Group on Defence on 7 September, the day before its launch, after France and Germany withheld support.
Signal › Article 4 has no threshold; any ally may request consultations, and none has after any flank incident since the Kh-101 in Lublin on 30 July, Tuesday's shootdown included. The last requests, Poland's and Estonia's in September 2025, produced a Council statement and Eastern Sentry; the protocol as proposed names no output at all, only a meeting. It lands on the service that has owed a 42.7 blueprint since April and lost its defence advisory group last week. The enablers instrument is the one item that maps onto a gap already quantified, the June Force Model cuts, tankers among them. Kallas's strategy is where the protocol acquires a legal base or remains a speech.
GRZSEADIP Moscow names the ship off Gedser, the corvette Soobrazitelny, and Belousov decorates its commander for "preventing a provocation"
Lenta.ru 16 Sep · The Moscow Times 16 Sep · DR 16 Sep · Euronews 15 Sep · Signal No. 146
The Russian defence ministry said on its Telegram channel on Wednesday that Andrei Belousov had awarded the medal For Combat Distinction to the commander of the corvette Soobrazitelny "for skilful and resolute actions in preventing a provocation by a Danish air force helicopter". In the ministry's version, on 14 September the crew detected a Danish Fennec on a closing course in neutral waters of the Baltic which did not answer calls on the international channel; the commander fired two red signal flares and the helicopter left. Denmark's account, given on Monday night, is that the Fennec was carrying out routine photography of the ship in international waters off Gedser and one flare passed close to it. DR reports the ship, hull number 531, a corvette where Danish Defence's statement said frigate, was also identified by German federal police, and that Danish civilians met the same ship twice in July, in the Fehmarn Belt and off Bornholm.
Signal › The two accounts differ on one verifiable fact, whether the Fennec answered on the international channel, and Danish Defence has published neither the helicopter's track nor its radio log. Tuesday's question was whether the ship was a Baltic Fleet unit in transit; the July sightings answer it, a corvette seen in Danish waters three times since July. In June the Admiral Grigorovich was named by the British side; this ship was named by Moscow, with a medal for the commander, within two days. Copenhagen holds the track and the radio log and has released neither.
PLBGRZ Nausėda: a Russian Gerbera diverted by Ukrainian jamming, and fighters are "not an efficient solution"; Polish prosecutors find a warhead on the Rusinowo Gerbera
LRT 16 Sep · LRT 16 Sep · TVN24 16 Sep · RMF24 16 Sep · Signal No. 128 · Signal No. 146
Gitanas Nausėda said after the State Defence Council on Wednesday that the drone destroyed over Kaišiadorys district was, "based on the information currently available", a Gerbera type, and that "most likely, it was a Russian drone intended for Ukraine that was diverted from its course by Ukrainian electronic warfare measures and entered our territory, where it was shot down". He said that once such objects are detected "we could and should have the means to destroy" them and that relying on fighter jets "was not an efficient solution"; Lithuania needs better detection and other ways to bring drones down. Earlier on Wednesday Robertas Kaunas, the defence minister, had declined to name an origin: the debris "must be thoroughly analysed", "the engine is important, as are other engineering and technical components", and "we simply do not want to speculate". Bomb-disposal teams defused the charge, and Vilnius agreed to exchange information with Warsaw on the drone recovered off Rusinowo.
In Poland the military prosecutor in Poznań said on Wednesday that the Rusinowo aircraft is "a Gerbera 2 type drone produced and used by the Russian Federation" and carried a fragmentation-blast warhead with a fuze, about four kilograms of explosive on one Polish account. Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said the drone may have transited Lithuanian airspace on Sunday, "crossed the Lithuanian border with the Kaliningrad region and most likely operated over the Baltic", and that the two countries' services will establish this together; on Monday Poland's Operational Command had said the drone most likely drifted in from international waters and that no violation of Polish airspace has been observed since 31 July. No Belarusian or Russian statement on the Kaišiadorys drone was on the record by the editorial close.
Signal › The record in the three earlier Baltic engagements is two Ukrainian airframes and one from Russia; on Wednesday the president gave a Russian reading ahead of the wreckage and the minister declined to. It is the mirror of Riga's on Balvi, a Ukrainian airframe pushed off course by Russian jamming, except that Balvi's was a military identification and Wednesday's is "most likely". The Polish finding adds a second armed Gerbera to the Baltic record after Gaižiūnai in July 2025, about four kilograms against two. Nausėda's remark on fighters is the operator's point: an engagement half an hour inside the border by a scrambled pair is the expensive case, and Lithuania has published neither its detection coverage nor its engagement criteria. The engine identification and the joint finding on whether Sunday's and Monday's drone are one aircraft come next.
Procurement · Industry · Capability
ARCSTK FMV confirms the HIMARS buy at SEK 7 billion with first delivery in 2027; the selection criterion was "assessed time to operational capability", and the contracts are still to be signed
On the government's authorisation of 7 September, Sweden's defence materiel agency says it will procure HIMARS launchers and ammunition for about SEK 7 billion, first delivery 2027, and that it "will now continue the work of concluding the agreements and signing the contracts needed". Oscar Elardt, head of army systems: "The single most important selection criterion has been the assessed time to operational capability in the army's war units", and on that basis the recommendation fell on the American system over the others evaluated. No launcher count is given; SVT reported "just over ten" on 7 September and the US cleared up to twenty in March.
STKDIN Indra unveils Squall at Unvex: over 300 kilometres, a 50–60 kilogram warhead, a press estimate of about a tenth of a high-end missile's cost; no flight date, no line
Indra presented the Squall at the Unvex show in San Javier on Wednesday: a cruise missile flying low at Mach 0.8 to beyond 300 kilometres, from land and naval launchers, with a "resilient national supply chain" of components. Juan Mahon, commercial development director of its weapons and munitions division: "If you want to saturate an enemy's defences, you cannot use many missiles when each costs two to three million euros." The release gives no prototype status, first flight or in-service date. Four sovereign long-range strike lines have been announced in Germany and Poland this year, Ruta at Unterlüß, Barracuda at Bydgoszcz, the Anubis strike drone near Munich and Anthem at Leipzig; Squall is a design with no line and no customer named.
Forward Look
Thursday 17 September, Strasbourg and Prague: Mark Carney addresses the European Parliament and holds a press conference with Roberta Metsola, with Canada's share of the EUR 90 billion loan still without a figure after Wednesday's meeting with von der Leyen; the IISS Prague Defence Summit runs to Friday, with Kaimo Kuusk, who left the Estonian defence ministry on Tuesday, on the programme.
Friday 18 September, Fort Worth, Bonn, St Petersburg: Pistorius takes delivery of the first German F-35 at Lockheed Martin; the US consulate-general in Bonn and Germany's in St Petersburg close; the Pentagon's Europe posture decision is due by this date; the Belarusian Western Operational Command exercise ends; the Duma vote runs Friday to Sunday.
Week ahead: the seven-day listings bridge expires at midnight on Tuesday 22 September; the Commission's Arctic strategy and the SAFE spending report in October; the DGA's surface-drone bids on 15 October; the EU–Canada summit in Montreal at the end of October.
Watch: a DSCA notification for the Typhon launchers, or the "shortly" step Pistorius named; a delivery year in any Tomahawk submission to the budget committee; publication of the omnibus acts in the Official Journal and the first permit granted by lapse; the security strategy von der Leyen and Kallas are to present, and whether the emergency protocol gets a legal base and a date; the Fennec's track or radio log from Copenhagen; the engine identification of the Kaišiadorys drone and the joint Polish–Lithuanian finding; an energy target named in either side's morning report, or a Ukrenergo outage notice, with Syzran halted since Tuesday and Saratov since Friday per Reuters' sources; FMV's contract signature and a launcher count; the US decision on a European PAC-3 line between Germany and Poland, due on Warsaw's August timing by about mid-October; a type from the LKA for the Steinhuder Meer wreckage.
