WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Germany and three other NATO partners will develop a long-range weapon system for joint defense. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) and his counterparts from France, Italy and Poland laid the foundations for the Elsa ("European Long-Range Strike Approach") project on the fringes of the NATO summit in Washington. They signed a declaration of intent with the aim of creating military capabilities, strengthening deterrence and defense capabilities and creating the industrial basis for this.
The project is to involve a cruise missile that has a significantly greater range than the German Taurus - which flies around 500 kilometers - and could also be fired from land or sea ("deep precision strike").
US Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can also be equipped with nuclear weapons, have ranges of well over 2000 kilometers. On the fringes of the summit, it was announced the day before that the USA would be stationing Tomahawks, SM-6 air defense missiles and new hypersonic weapons in Germany from 2026 onwards./cn/DP/men
