US to deploy hypersonic missiles in Germany that could strike Russia
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Germany will host American hypersonic missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia even if Donald Trump returns as president, defence minister Boris Pistorius has said.
As the United States announced at the Nato summit in Washington that it would deploy the powerful weapons in Germany for the first time since the Cold War, Berlin seemed confident this would happen regardless of whether Joe Biden loses the election race.
Speaking to German media outlet RedaktionsNetzwerk, Mr Pistorius said: “We are talking about a very serious capability gap in Europe ... that’s why I can’t imagine that any other president would deviate from this.”
Under the latest American plans to support Ukraine, Washington will start deploying SM-6, Tomahawk and hypersonic missiles in Germany from 2026.
“Exercising these advanced capabilities will demonstrate the United States’ commitment to Nato and its contributions to European integrated deterrence,” the US government said.
The Nato summit was held in the shadow of a Russian air assault on Ukraine this week that included the hitting of a children’s hospital in Kyiv, which killed at least 36 people.
The attack caused widespread outrage and prompted calls for the Western alliance, which has been reluctant to send any weapons that may escalate the conflict beyond Ukraine, to step up its support.
In a separate interview, Mr Pistorius doubled down on his view that Germany’s Nato spending was too low.
“From my perspective the approach that is being taken for next year is too low in terms of what needs to be done and provided in the context of the change in the times and the threat situation,” he told Deutschlandfunk, a German radio station. “I’m sticking to this.”
Any money that is not invested in the German army now “could come back to haunt us” in future, he added.
Mr Pistorius had expressed frustration earlier this week that Germany, which is wrestling with a budget crisis because of government spending limits, has not pledged more funding for the Bundeswehr.
Mr Pistorius, a member of chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-Left Social Democratic Party, says he wants to see about £5 billion a year added to his £44 billion military budget.
Meanwhile, Nato officials said a new defence site in Poland dubbed Aegis Ashore, which can intercept ballistic missiles in the event of a Nato-Russia war, was now “mission ready”.
“This is an important step for transatlantic security and Nato’s ability to defend against the growing threat of ballistic missiles,” said Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general.
“Ballistic missiles have been widely used in conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. As a defensive alliance we cannot ignore that threat. Missile defence is an essential element for Nato’s core task of collective defence.”
On Wednesday Sir Keir Starmer announced that British Storm Shadow missiles could now be fired by Ukraine into Russian territory, ending a previous policy of ambiguity on how Kyiv was permitted to use the weapons.
The move will anger the Kremlin, which had warned Britain against allowing Ukrainian allies to use the missiles to attack targets within Moscow’s borders.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said: “This morning, I learnt about the permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory. Today, we had the opportunity to discuss the practical implementation of this decision.”
