BERLIN — Germany has finalized an agreement with the United States to purchase American-made Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles and station them on German territory, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced on Thursday during a government statement to the Bundestag.
Speaking to lawmakers after returning from the two-day NATO summit in Ankara, Merz said the deal was reached on the sidelines of the alliance meeting held on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Turkish capital. He described the outcome as one that exceeded his expectations for the summit.
“This will close an important strategic gap in our defense, and at the same time, we will work to develop our own European systems and station them in Europe,” Merz told parliament, framing the purchase as part of a dual-track approach that combines short-term acquisition of American systems with longer-term investment in European industrial capacity.
According to statements from the German government, Washington has committed to formally granting Berlin approval to procure the Tomahawk missiles and corresponding ground-based launchers in August. The specific number of missiles and launch systems Germany intends to acquire has not been made public and remains classified.
The Tomahawk, in service with the United States military since the 1980s, is a subsonic cruise missile that flies at low altitude, around 30 meters above the ground, which complicates detection by air-defense systems. Its range of approximately 1,600 kilometers and precision guidance capability make it suitable for striking targets deep inside opposing territory. German officials have said the deployment is intended to address a medium-range capability shortfall in Europe that emerged after the expiration of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
The agreement marks a significant reversal in the trajectory of the deployment plan. Under an earlier arrangement announced in 2024, the previous United States administration had committed to rotating a battalion equipped with long-range Tomahawk missiles through German territory beginning in 2026 as an interim deterrent measure while European allies developed their own equivalent systems. In May, President Donald Trump announced plans to reduce the American troop footprint in Germany, and the future of the missile deployment became unclear. Thursday’s announcement replaces the earlier plan of stationing United States forces with a purchase arrangement under which Germany itself will own and operate the systems.
Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, speaking during the Ankara summit, said there was a significant gap in Europe’s medium-range deterrence capability and that Berlin intended to close it. Germany currently produces the Taurus cruise missile, which has a range of roughly 500 kilometers, considerably shorter than that of the Tomahawk.
Merz used the announcement to underline what he described as a broader shift in European security thinking. He said Europeans had come to accept that they could not outsource their own defense and that Germany was responsible for its own security while remaining part of a transatlantic alliance through NATO.
On Wednesday during the summit, Trump announced that the United States would grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air-defense systems domestically, a step Kyiv had long sought. Officials and analysts have described the Tomahawk arrangement with Germany and the Patriot licensing arrangement with Ukraine as elements of a broader shift in which Washington is transferring more production and procurement responsibility to its European partners.
Delivery timelines have not been made public. Prior Tomahawk orders placed by other American allies have experienced multi-year lead times, and Pentagon inventories have been drawn down by recent operations. German officials have not specified when the first missiles are expected to arrive on German soil.
