France seeks to join UK-German long-range missile plan

France is seeking to join a German-British plan to produce new long-range missiles as Europe races to strengthen its ability to strike deep inside Russia without the help of the US. 

Paris has declared its interest in becoming part of Berlin and London’s deep precision strike programme, according to five people familiar with the discussions, in a move that forms part of a wider Franco-German dialogue on defence.

The three nations are hoping to hold three-way talks in early June. 

The programme, announced by the UK and Germany in 2024 as the flagship of their Trinity House defence agreement, aims to produce a family of advanced ground-launched missiles with a range of more than 2,000km that could strike military targets within Russia.

It has gained new urgency after Donald Trump cancelled a plan to deploy a battalion equipped with Tomahawk missiles and other long-range weapons to a US base in western Germany. The Biden-era concept had been intended as a stopgap solution while Europe developed its own deep precision strike capabilities. 

European nations have some conventional missiles with a range of around 300km or more, but these are almost exclusively air- or sea-launched. That means that European fighter jets, warships or submarines would have to enter contested waters or airspace to strike targets deep inside Russia.

Moscow’s widespread use of ground-launched missiles in Ukraine — in addition to stationing long-range weapons in the Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad — has spurred European nations to develop their own similar capabilities in a move they hope will help deter Russian aggression. 

The interest from Paris also reflects President Emmanuel Macron’s growing view that developing advanced conventional weapons would be a valuable complement to the French nuclear deterrent.

While France was initially involved in talks with Germany and the UK about teaming up to develop a long-range strike capability, Paris later held back as a debate unfolded about its nuclear doctrine, according to one person familiar with the discussions.

In a landmark speech in March, Macron laid out how France could implicitly protect its neighbours with its nuclear deterrent, announcing talks with six willing countries including Germany. But he also stressed the importance of long-range missiles, air defences and surveillance for managing escalation “before the nuclear threshold is crossed”.

French officials concluded that joining the UK-German programme would help “narrow the gap” between conventional and nuclear deterrence, another of the people familiar with the talks said.

The German-British deep precision strike proposal, which is part of the six-country project known as ELSA, still remains in the conceptual stage. But the two countries have agreed that they want the weapons to include stealth cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons that travel at ultra-high speeds on unpredictable trajectories, making them hard to track.

The initial focus will be on ground-launched systems.

Companies involved in the discussions include the pan-European missile maker MBDA and the German-British start-up Hypersonica, which in February said that it had become the first privately funded European defence company to complete a successful hypersonic test flight. 

Paris is proposing that ArianeGroup, which is jointly owned by the European aerospace group Airbus and France’s Safran, could join the programme to supply rocket boosters capable of launching hypersonic weapons into the Earth’s atmosphere. 

Ariane currently makes the ballistic missile M51 for the French nuclear programme.

French officials believe that their involvement in the programme could speed up the development of the new deep-strike missiles, which the UK and Germany have said are expected to enter service in the early 2030s and will be among the most advanced missile systems ever designed.

Macron hinted in the March speech that he could be interested in joining the UK-German programme, singling out the two countries by name as partners that he wanted to collaborate with on advanced long-range weapons.

“This will give new options to conventionally manage escalation, at a time when adversaries are deploying new technologies and weapons,” he said. A joint French-German statement published after the speech also pledged to develop capabilities including deep precision strikes. 

German defence minister Boris Pistorius gave the first explicit acknowledgment of the French interest in the British-German programme earlier this month, saying: “Now the French want to join us — and to do so as quickly as possible.”

Berlin is enthusiastic about Paris joining. But in London, there is unease among some officials about allowing the French to join a project that they have been discussing with Berlin for more than 18 months.

Some fear it could be unbalanced by the entrance of a new partner with its own conceptions for the weapon as well as its own defence industrial interests.

A string of Franco-German defence collaborations have fallen apart due to political and industrial tensions, including a plan to build a joint fighter jet under a programme called FCAS, which is on the brink of collapse.

But the UK and France together successfully developed the Storm Shadow/Scalp missile, which entered service in the 2000s.

Together with Germany, the three nations represent Europe’s largest economic and military powers and have a history of working together in the E3 format on national security issues including Ukraine, Iran and the conflict in Gaza.

Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose country is the other European nation to possess nuclear weapons, committed to an unprecedented level of co-operation on nuclear policy in a joint declaration in July 2025. 

Additional reporting by Leila Abboud in Paris