Germany strikes deal with US to acquire Tomahawk missiles UPDATED

Germany and the United States have reached an agreement under which Washington will formally authorize Berlin in August to purchase Tomahawk cruise missiles and Typhon ground-based launch systems, Der Spiegel reports.

According to the magazine, the agreement was kept confidential until the last moment, despite German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth having signed a letter of intent a day before the NATO summit in Ankara. When questioned about the status of the negotiations, Pistorius acknowledged only that the talks had made progress.

The report said the deal still requires approval by the US Congress, although, following the backing of President Donald Trump's administration, congressional approval is expected to be largely procedural.

Neither side has disclosed how many Tomahawk missiles or Typhon launchers Germany is expected to receive. However, the agreement is anticipated to be worth a substantial sum, with a single Tomahawk cruise missile valued at more than €1 million.

Earlier, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Bundestag that Berlin had reached an agreement with Washington to acquire US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles as part of efforts to strengthen Germany's long-range strike capabilities.

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Germany has reached an agreement with the United States to purchase Tomahawk cruise missiles and deploy them on German territory, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told lawmakers in the Bundestag, Reuters reports.

Merz said the agreement was finalized during talks with the US administration on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, describing the gathering as having "exceeded all of my expectations."

"In doing so, we are closing a critical strategic gap in our defence, while simultaneously working to develop our own European systems and station them in Europe," he said.

The future of the Tomahawk deployment had been uncertain after US President Donald Trump announced in May that he would reduce the American military presence in Germany. The move had been widely interpreted as effectively shelving plans by the previous US administration to deploy a battalion equipped with long-range Tomahawk missiles to the country.

Berlin has long advocated the deployment as a powerful deterrent against Russia while European nations continue developing indigenous long-range missile capabilities.

By Vafa Guliyeva