Russia Threatens Action If U.S. Proceeds with New Plans to Send Long-Range Missiles into Germany

As three days of NATO meetings celebrating its 75th anniversary concluded this week, Germany and the U.S. announced joint plans to substantially augment the European nation’s long-range defense systems with some of the most advanced missile installations since the 1980s.

The U.S. Department of Defense and Germany announced the surprising shift in strategy for the first time in summary on July 10 in a formal joint statement.

“The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future,” the official statement read.  “When fully developed, these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe.”

The Department of Defense explained further that these new missiles launch structures will both be constructed as well as used in a new series of military exercises, as a show of force targeting Russia as a potential direct aggressor in Europe.

Demonstrating “these advanced capabilities,” the statement continued, “will demonstrate the United States’ commitment to NATO and its contributions to European integrated deterrence.”

On July 11, the Department of Defense confirmed these new missile placements will be installed over time. It provided a public timeline for bringing the new weaponry to Germany, with projections that everything would be in place by 2026.

Though exact numbers of each kind of missile and where they will be positioned have not been confirmed, the DoD acknowledged this will substantially increase the quantities of missiles stationed in Germany and which have the capability of striking targets deep within Russian borders.

According to Raytheon, the U.S. military contractor which manufactures the Tomahawk missile, it can travel as far as 1,000 miles (about 1,600 kilometers) from its launch point. Different variants of the Tomahawk exist, with differing payload capabilities, propulsion systems, targeting methodologies, and means of evading counterattack weapons. The Block IV Tactical Tomahawk, also known as the TACTOM weapon, can, according to the manufacturer’s public information, “loiter for hours and change course instantly on command”. It also can switch targets on demand.

The Block III and Block IV models of the Tomahawk each can carry 1,000-pound warheads. Both are understood to include a “submunition” release system capable of releasing multiple smaller explosive loads, using a system known as a “combined effects bomb”.

The hypersonic missiles referenced in the joint U.S.-Germany announcement have far faster propulsion capabilities than conventional long-range missiles. They also have advanced avionics to detect incoming countermeasures and are capable of high-speed evasive maneuvers to avoid being hit.

The new advanced munitions placements represent the most aggressive changes in U.S. defense strategy toward Russia since the United States withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019. The INF treaty was signed between the United States and the Soviet Union at the time when the entire Soviet bloc was collapsing political, militarily, and economically. It specifically banned placement of either conventional or nuclear missiles in Europe within ranges between 310 and 3,400 miles (500 to 5,500 kilometers) of Russia. The treaty also called for the U.S. to remove over 2,600 long-range weapons of various types from bases in Europe, which the Department of Defense claims it did.

Germany is also being pressured by its NATO partners to allow shipments of its shorter-range Taurus missile directly to Ukraine, to assist with the war in Russia. Those missiles, with a range of 310 miles (500 kilometers), less than one-third the distance the Tomahawks are capable of traveling, would provide significant additional firepower for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s troops to use against the invading Russia forces.

After several months of arm-twisting at official summits such this week’s NATO meeting and behind-the-scenes phone calls and meetings, Chancellor Olaf Scholz continues to declare his reluctance to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine. He is also adamant that even if the missile transfer might be authorized, he will never send German troops to Ukraine to train military personnel in the use of the weapons. It would be no different from what the U.S., the United Kingdom, and other NATO members are already doing on the ground there, but Scholz has consistently said he believes this could put his country at risk of direct attack as the war continues.

In a communication from Moscow on July 11, President Vladimir Putin’s government issued the first of several statements about NATO’s escalating confrontation with Russia over the Ukraine invasion. It said it was aware of the Alliance’s just announced plans to “create separate logistics hubs in Black Sea cities”, conceivably to assist Ukraine with supplies if needed, and the buildup of what it called “additional facilities in Europe”. Those facilities are understood to include the new Tomahawk deployments.

Dmitry Peskov, an official spokesperson for President Putin, organized a conference call with reporters to comment on the new developments.

“This poses a very serious threat to our national security. All of this will necessitate thoughtful, coordinated and effective responses from us to counter-deter NATO,” he said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov expanded on this during a short interview at a forum taking place in St. Petersburg yesterday.

“Beyond any doubt, our military has already taken note of this statement,” Ryabov said. “I think that it is just a component of the escalation policy, one of the elements of intimidation, which today is almost the main part of the Russia policy pursued by NATO and the U.S.”

The comments from the Russian presidential spokesperson and the deputy foreign minister complement one Putin made the previous week while attending a summit of his own in Kazakhstan.

“As for deployment, I said that we are declaring a moratorium on the possible future deployment of our relevant systems until these missile systems appear in some region of the world,” Putin told reporters then. “If American-made medium- and shorter-range missiles appear somewhere, then we reserve the right to have a mirror response.”

In a briefing with reporters after the Russian reaction to the substantial expansion of advanced U.S. missile installations in Germany, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tried to represent the joint U.S.-German decision as just routine military logistics and nothing more threatening.

“What we are deploying to Germany is a defense capability like many other defensive capabilities we’ve deployed across the alliance across the decades,” the National Security Advisor said. “So more Russian saber-rattling obviously is not going to deter us from doing what we think is necessary to keep the alliance as strong as possible.”