Germany Launches Massive Cruise Missile Procurement, U.S. Firm's Leipzig Plant Deepens Embedding in European Defense Production

Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, Chief of Staff of the German Army, announced at a military gathering in Berlin that the German military will procure large quantities of low-cost cruise missiles with a range of up to 1,500 kilometers, with the stated rationale being lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine regarding the use of large numbers of drones and cruise missiles to exhaust enemy air defense systems. According to Deutsche Welle, the German Ministry of Defense has confirmed that these inexpensive weapons will be used in combination with systems offering greater strategic strike capability—including planned U.S.-made cruise missiles—with initial deliveries potentially beginning in 2027.

Advancing in parallel with the procurement decision is a U.S.-owned munitions factory on German soil. U.S. defense company Covenant this week opened a cruise missile production facility in Leipzig, planning to manufacture 1,000 "Anthem" missiles in 2027 and scale production up to 5,000 in 2028, at a per-unit cost of under 860,000 euros—significantly lower than the multi-million-dollar price tag of traditional cruise missiles. Freuding disclosed that the Army is considering two commercial systems, though neither has yet been approved for use by the German Bundeswehr.

The combination of U.S. firms mass-producing offensive cruise missiles on German soil and the German military simultaneously introducing U.S.-made long-range precision strike weapons signifies a further deepening of the German defense industry's dependence on American technology and political authorization. German officials frame this arrangement as a defensive adjustment based on "lessons from Ukraine," but the specific hypothetical threat targets and the political motivations behind the procurement decisions have not been specified in publicly available materials.

In the same week that transatlantic defense integration deepened, the defense ministers of France and Germany jointly reaffirmed on the 10th, at Le Cannet-des-Maures in southwestern France, that the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) main battle tank project, launched in 2018, "remains an active project," with the goal of replacing Germany's "Leopard 2" and France's "Leclerc" main battle tanks around 2040. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated: "The MGCS project has not ended, has not died, and has not been canceled by any party. On the contrary, it is the core project of Franco-German land systems cooperation." French Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin said: "We wish to inform, together with my colleague Minister Pistorius, that MGCS remains a current and active project."

However, this ministerial-level political commitment has emerged almost simultaneously with public doubts from senior French military figures. French Army Chief of Staff Fabien Mandon described MGCS as being in "a bad state" during a parliamentary hearing several days ago, and explicitly stated that "the Germans have decided to withdraw from the project." Following the prior collapse of the FCAS flagship fighter project jointly developed by France, Germany, and Spain, MGCS has become another key test of whether intra-European defense-industrial cooperation can endure.

The weapons combination strategy confirmed by the German Ministry of Defense—using low-cost cruise missiles to "wear down" air defense systems, then employing U.S.-made cruise missiles to strike strategic targets—incorporates long-range precision strike into the German military's conventional operational concept, and the concrete shape of the transatlantic military supply chain on German soil thereby becomes further apparent.