formal Letter of Request<\/a> for Typhon launchers submitted to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last July \u2212 remains officially \u201cin process,\u201d though M\u00fcller declined to say whether Washington had responded to the ask.<\/p>\nThe third pillar is the European Long-Range Strike Approach, or ELSA, a joint program with the United Kingdom under which Berlin and London are co-developing strike capabilities beyond 2,000 kilometers range, with France recently signaling its intention to join.<\/p>\n
The timeline, however, remains uncertain. When pressed on whether ELSA-derived capabilities would be ready before 2030, M\u00fcller declined to commit to any date. \u201cI cannot say anything about a timeline,\u201d he told reporters, citing dependence on industrial availability and technology development.<\/p>\n
In Munster, Pistorius pointed to the ongoing European effort. \u201cWe began in 2023, together with the British, and now the French want to join, to develop the precision-strike systems ourselves as Europeans \u2212 as fast as possible,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the same time, we need an instrument \u2212 with U.S. help or via other paths \u2212 to close the capability gap in that bridging period as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The admission underscores how dependent Germany\u2019s defense planning remains on American cooperation at a moment when that bond is increasingly uncertain. It also suggests that both of Berlin\u2019s planning scenarios for obtaining Typhon launchers \u2013 by way of a U.S. Army formation stationed in Germany, or through a Bundeswehr purchase for use by national forces \u2013 are now deemed dead ends.<\/p>\n
M\u00fcller sought to downplay the operational implications, insisting that NATO\u2019s defense plans account for capability contributions across allied nations and that no gap would emerge at the alliance level. \u201cIt is not Germany\u2019s deep-precision-strike capabilities alone on which the deterrence and defense capability of Europe hangs,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Pistorius has previously warned, including as far back as 2023, that European NATO members would need to adapt to a reduced U.S. footprint on the continent as Washington pivots toward the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n
Linus H\u00f6ller is Defense News’ Europe correspondent and OSINT investigator. He reports on the arms deals, sanctions, and geopolitics shaping Europe and the world. He holds master\u2019s degrees in WMD nonproliferation, terrorism studies, and international relations, and works in four languages: English, German, Russian, and Spanish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VIENNA \u2014 Germany\u2019s ambitions to close a long-range strike capability gap are facing a fresh setback after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1326,1327,1322,9527,5,7092,9525,9526],"class_list":{"0":"post-10486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-circulated-defense-news","9":"tag-defense-news","10":"tag-dn-dnr","11":"tag-elsa","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-long-range-strike","14":"tag-typhon","15":"tag-u-s-forces-in-europe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6M6GCYYO7NCWDECIE2ONLPOAR4.jpg\")
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius sits on a GTK Boxer vehicle during a demonstration of capabilities by the German army on May 4, 2026, near Munster, Germany. (Morris MacMatzen\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n