In 2019, the US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibited land-based missile systems with a range of 310 to 3,400 miles. Already Washington has briefly deployed such systems to southeast Asia (Typhon launchers in the Philippines for temporary exercises), which has riled China, but now for the first time nuke-capable missiles will be deployed to Germany.
The US announced Wednesday in relation to the ongoing NATO summit in Washington: “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.”
“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 statement posted to the White House website adds.
There’s a widespread belief that the US dropped the INF treaty in the first place so that it could deploy intermediate-range missiles near China. But in 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war kicked off, and much of the West’s national security focus since then has been to rebuild Europe’s defenses.
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