BERLIN — Germany has agreed to purchase American Tomahawk cruise missiles and station them within its own borders, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced Thursday, signaling a significant move away from relying on planned U.S. deployments toward developing Germany’s own long-range military strike power.
Merz informed members of parliament that he finalized the agreement with the U.S. government while attending a NATO summit in Ankara, noting that discussions held Tuesday and Wednesday had gone better than he had anticipated.
“We are closing a critical strategic gap in our defence, while simultaneously working to develop our own European systems and station them in Europe,” Merz said.
German government sources indicate that Washington formally committed in a letter of intent signed Tuesday to grant approval in August for Germany to acquire Tomahawk missiles along with ground-based Typhon launchers. The exact number of missiles and launchers Germany intends to buy has not been made public, as that information is classified.
The purchase appears to align with President Donald Trump’s broader effort to encourage European allies to fund their own security needs — including by purchasing American-made weapons.
The future of any Tomahawk supply to Germany had been uncertain since Trump announced in May a reduction of U.S. military presence in the country. That announcement was widely interpreted as scrapping a plan from the prior administration to station a U.S. battalion armed with long-range Tomahawk missiles on German soil — a measure originally intended as a temporary but powerful deterrent against Russia while European nations worked on developing comparable weapons of their own.
Germany does produce its own cruise missile, the Taurus, but its range of roughly 500 kilometers — about 311 miles — is three to five times shorter than that of the Tomahawk.
