It turns out Europe’s favorite American import isn’t fast food or Netflix. It’s missiles, and Europe needs to start making its own.
Eight weeks into the second Trump administration, European leaders are finally aware that they need to take ownership of the continent’s conventional security. Current discussions grappling with the question of what that looks like in practice evoke long-standing debates about Europe’s well-documented capability gaps. Moving forward, the debate should shift towards the question of what it takes for Europeans to engage in high-end combat operations against Russia. The hardest test will not be in the size of armies and nuclear sharing agreements — even though these may prove important — but in Europe’s ability to engage and destroy high-value military targets at operational and strategic depth without U.S. support.
Today, Europe is in no position to do so. As is common in asymmetric alliances with a great power patron, European deep strike capabilities rely on the United States in three key areas: sufficient magazine depth, missile manufacturing, and kill chain architecture. Only by overcoming these dependencies can Europe deliver on its conventional deterrence and defense commitments.
Alliance Divisions of Labor
In the U.S.-led alliance system that emerged after World War II, Washington and its allies have each performed different roles that prioritize certain types of military capabilities.
In Europe and the Indo-Pacific, U.S. allies have generally focused their attention and resources on defensive, denial-based strategies through which they seek to delay, disrupt and, if possible, defeat potential attacks at or close to their borders. In NATO’s land-based theater, denial strategies rest on anti-tank weapons, precision-guided rockets, mines, short-range anti-air missiles, small arms, fixed defensive lines, or local militias suited for irregular warfare. In the vast maritime stretches of the Western Pacific, a denial-based approach relies on anti-surface warfare (including air-launched missiles and land-based anti-ship cruise missiles), anti-aircraft systems, air defense destroyers and cruisers, land-based air defenses, and attack ground forces to resist amphibious assault.
The United States, backed by its immense military power, amplifies and enables its allies’ denial efforts through the forward deployment of ground, air, and naval units as well as critical command, logistics, and intelligence support. It also provides strategic coverage through its nuclear umbrella and conventional long-range strike assets capable of engaging targets at operational and strategic depth.
Today, these alliance divisions of labor between the United States and its allies grow increasingly outdated. Most importantly, U.S. allies increasingly invest in their own capacity for deep strike, with Japanese counterstrike investments or South Korea’s Kill Chain preemptive strike system and Massive Punishment and Retaliation Plan being key examples of blurring spear-shield divisions in Asia.
A European Missile Gap
In Europe, this has been the case much longer. Its two nuclear powers, Britain and France, have had independent nuclear arsenals and conventional deep strike capabilities, and Germany and Italy also maintained longer-range capabilities. Yet in recent years, these systems have proliferated more widely. Countries like Poland, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden are all in the process of buying systems such as Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (its extended version ranging up to 1,000 kilometers) or Tomahawk cruise missiles (with 1,600-kilometer ranges).
In 2024, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland launched the European Long-Range Strike Approach to develop a European-made land-based cruise missile with an alleged range between 1,000 and 2,000 kilometers that should be available by the 2030s. Through the initiative, which now also includes Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, Europeans seek to overcome a pressing capability gap and “ensure better burden-sharing within the alliance.”
More European long-range strike systems are on the way: The sea- and air-launched versions of the Anglo-French(-Italian) Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon are expected to arrive by 2028 and 2030, respectively, providing these two countries with the capability to hit targets at distances over 1,600 kilometers. Meanwhile, the German government is looking into the development of a next-generation Taurus Neo missile with enhanced range, accuracy, and explosive power, to arrive from 2029 onwards.
Notwithstanding these recent efforts, European long-range missile capabilities remain scarce. After the Cold War, Europeans not only heavily disinvested in their militaries but also expected to operate mostly in permissive environments. As a result, air forces prioritized the acquisition of bombs and short-range missiles with limited explosive power to be used against irregular forces in populated areas. In a conflict with Russia in which a highly contested airspace is a fair operational assumption, the use of such weapons will be limited.
The Deterrence Logic of Long-Range Strike
Present-day conventional warfare has come to be marked by the maturation of the precision-strike regime in which militaries seek to exploit dramatic advances in information capabilities and improvements in precision weapons’ accuracy, range, and lethality. To prevail on a precision-armed battlefield, defenders need to disrupt, paralyze, or destroy an aggressor’s key nodes such as sensors and command-and-control networks while ensuring a resilient operational system of their own.
Defensive measures like hardening, concealment, and dispersion, or air and missile defense are important but not sufficient. This has long been true given the asymmetry between strike and protection in precision-strike warfare, and only more so as we are moving into an “age of precise mass.” As the technology underlying precision weapons becomes less costly, countries (as well as non-state actors) can deploy relatively cheap drones and missiles at far greater precision and distance. When deployed at sufficient scale, these technologies can generate enormous striking power and overwhelm a defender’s defensive systems.
The United States, China, and Russia have long been preparing for precision strike warfare. In its Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons, the U.S. military seeks to ensure access and freedom of maneuver in combat theaters through the ability to damage or destroy an adversary’s command-and-control networks, sensors, and missile launchers. China’s System Destruction Warfare similarly targets an adversary’s operational system through the disruption of information flows and destruction of key physical nodes.
With its active defense strategy, Russia has built a diverse arsenal of deep strike capabilities alongside powerful integrated air and missile defense networks to counter enemy strikes. In its war against Ukraine, the Russian military has surely shown its weaknesses, including in its ability to conduct complex air operations, yet also successfully deployed a wide variety of cruise and ballistic missiles alongside long-range drones against strategic and operational targets at stand-off range. What is more, despite Western sanctions, Moscow has vastly expanded its weapon production, including its missile-manufacturing capabilities, and is expected to continue doing so in the years ahead.
As a result, Europe needs to be ready to conduct operations at the higher end of the conflict spectrum. Specifically, it needs capabilities that can cut through Russia’s anti-access/area denial layer, including stealthy, long-range air-to-air and air-to-ground systems, as well as ground- and sea-launched missiles with stand-off ranges to target Russian sensors, command and control networks, logistics centers, and launch systems.
There is an operational need to field these weapons closer to the frontlines. As Russia is likely hopeful to avoid a full-fledged war with NATO, it would engage in quick and localized strikes against nearby targets, using anti-access/area denial systems and nuclear intimidation to discourage and delay a response from allies further away from the eastern flank. If successful, an adversary can consolidate territorial gains accomplished in fait accompli scenarios that are notoriously hard to reverse.
A frontline ability to raise the cost of salami tactics (that is, limited, small-scale aggressions intended to avoid escalation) will not only reinforce deterrence through complicating adversary calculations but also allow for a more permissive environment for allied reinforcements to arrive. To achieve this, one needs to be able to strike the enemy’s staging areas, airports, radar installations, maritime ports, and logistical nodes, and possibly also an attacker’s critical economic and military infrastructure further away from the frontlines.
To be sure, some have raised questions about the military advantage of deep-strike capabilities. The proliferation of cheap uncrewed systems adds further concerns related to the cost-effectiveness of long-range missile systems. Yet, on the Ukrainian battlefield, long-range systems demonstrated their worth, disrupting logistics and command nodes or reducing Moscow’s oil refining capacity. Meanwhile, Russian missile strikes against Ukraine’s energy grid and other critical national infrastructure or cities have put a heavy strain on scarce Ukrainian air defense capabilities.
Europe’s Missiles: Too Few, Too Dependent, and Too American
Despite recent European efforts to invest in long-range weapon systems, NATO’s deep strike capacity is still disproportionately shouldered by the United States. The reason is threefold: Europe’s missile stocks are too low, its missile-manufacturing capacity insufficient, and its indigenous enabling infrastructure inadequate.
To begin with, Europe will need to buy, stockpile, and disperse long-range weapons in much larger quantities than it currently does. Precision-strike battles may well evolve into long and painful wars of attrition. In what could mark the return of broken-back-war theory, future conflicts may witness violent stalemates in which combatants engage in protracted disruption of one another’s military systems. Vital in such contexts will be defenders’ ability to sustain a fight through sufficient ammunition and defense-industrial capacity to replenish stocks. European procurement efforts in this regard, while accelerating, are still hardly sufficient, as Fabian Hoffmann wrote in these pages in 2023.
When it comes to missile manufacturing, Europe relies heavily on the United States. As recent procurement patterns demonstrate, allies buy mostly American, off-the-shelf missile technologies. Poland, Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands are all in the process of procuring U.S.-made Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles for their (in some cases, brand-new) F-35 fighter jets. The Netherlands, which is also buying U.S. Tomahawk missiles for its navy (an option that the Germans still mull over), did consider European alternatives like the French-made Missile de Croisière Naval or the British-French Future Cruise/Anti-Ship Weapon. Yet the Netherlands ultimately rejected these European options, citing uncertainties related to range, compatibility, or development timeframe. What is more, buying American is often a political choice, as many European (and other) allies hope that weapon purchases will help strengthen Washington’s commitment to their security.
The lack of European long-range options has long been an issue. Air-launched options include the German-Swedish KEPD-350 Taurus (with a 500-kilometer range) and French-British SCALP EG/Storm Shadow (with a 550-kilometer range), yet their production at scale has long been halted, and ramping up manufacturing will face challenges. Today, MBDA Germany and Saab’s annual production capacity of Taurus missiles is estimated between 40 to 60, and MBDA’s SCALP EG/Storm Shadow between 50 to 100. (Sweden’s expected Taurus order however could mean that production lines may be scaled up.)
To compare, Russia produces 40 to 50 Iskander missiles (with a 500-kilometer range), 30 to 50 Kalibr missiles (ranging around 1,500 to 2,500 kilometers), and 50 Kh-101 missiles (ranging between 2,500 to 2,800 kilometers) each month. In the United States, Lockheed Martin produces 720 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles per year and plans to scale up production rates to about 1,100.
When it comes to tactical long-range missiles, Europe’s reliance on the United States (and other non-European suppliers) is remarkable, too. The Baltic states, Poland, and Romania recently placed large orders for HIMARS rocket launchers and related ATACMS missiles (with ranges up to 300 kilometers). Poland also turned to Seoul to buy its South Korean equivalent, the Chunmoo (with a 290-kilometer range), while Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands are opting for the Israeli-made PULS rocket launcher artillery systems (with a range of up to 300 kilometers). The reason for buying non-European is straightforward: Europe does not produce these types of missiles and has no plans to do so in the future.
A noteworthy exception is the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile (with a 185-kilometer range) that was most recently acquired by Denmark and will soon be operated by ten European NATO members, including Norway, Poland, Germany, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Latvia. As mentioned, various future European-made systems are on the way, including British and French hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles. But if European industries want to offer sufficient and timely alternatives, things need to be sped up. One option worth considering is the production of Ukraine’s new Long Neptune missiles (with a 1,000-kilometer range) under license in Europe.
Finally, European (and Indo-Pacific) allies rely on American enablers that are indispensable for complex operations in a precision-strike environment. Europe’s dependence on U.S. command-and-control networks and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets is deep-seated and continuous, not least as Washington long preferred to maintain an escalation monopoly within its alliances. While in recent years the United States has softened its reluctance towards allies acquiring long-range missiles, it reportedly continued to resist allied kill chain independence.
Today, Europe’s reliance on American strategic enablers has become untenable in light of Washington’s calls for burden-shifting and the potential demand for some of these assets in non-European theaters. The recent pause in U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine further exposed the vulnerabilities related to intelligence and targeting reliance, and may spur a broader reassessment of hardware dependencies related to software support and maintenance.
To be sure, Europe’s rapidly expanding F-35 fleets add important intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, and the European Union has been boosting European intelligence and target acquisition capabilities. Yet overall, Europe lacks the broader kill chain architecture it would need in a sustained, high-end fight. Especially for target development, NATO remains critically reliant on the United States, and this is not easily overcome. Besides, even when Europe builds an indigenous kill chain architecture, U.S.-made missiles such as Tomahawks and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles continue to rely on American targeting.
Stocking Up on Conventional Deterrence
As Europe heads into its largest rearmament effort since the Cold War, it will face key questions regarding capability prioritization, acquisition, and force enablement. In recent budget surges Europe often turned to U.S. manufacturing for long-range missiles, while efforts to redress targeting reliance were far and few between.
Today, the mood is different, and European capitals will rethink what taking responsibility for Europe’s conventional deterrence and defense looks like in practice. This is not to say that any reliance on foreign produce should be avoided (something that is also impossible in light of increasingly integrated transatlantic supply chains), but one thing is sure: Europe is in missile short supply, whether it comes to the stocks it is buying and producing or the command-and-control networks and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets it is fielding.
The E.U. Council Conclusions of March 6 give reason for cautious optimism: In a last-minute update to the text proposed by Von der Leyen, E.U. member states added deep precision strike to their capability priority list. Concrete implementation will determine whether alliance divisions of labor will shift at last.
Lotje Boswinkel is a Ph.D. researcher at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She is also an associate fellow with NATO Defense College and a Morgenthau fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center.
Image: Office of the President of Ukraine via Wikimedia Commons
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