WASHINGTON: The United States will start deploying long-range fire capabilities in Germany in 2026 in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to NATO and European defense, the US and Germany said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
The United States’ “episodic deployments” are in preparation for longer-term stationing of such capabilities that will include SM-6, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons that have a longer range than current capabilities in Europe, the two countries said.
Both the Tomahawk and the Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) are made by RTX’s Raytheon division.
Ground-based missiles with a range exceeding 500 kilometers were banned until 2019 under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev and former US President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
It marked the first time the two superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals and eliminated a whole category of weapons.
Falling in line with the signatories, Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic destroyed their missiles in the 1990s, to be followed later by Slovakia and Bulgaria.
The US withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019 saying that Moscow was violating the accord, citing Russia’s development of the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile, known in NATO as the SSC-8.
The Kremlin repeatedly denied the accusation and then imposed a moratorium on its own development of missiles previously banned by the INF treaty — ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 km to 5,500 km.
At the end of June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow should resume production of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles after the US brought similar missiles to Europe and Asia.
Putin said Russia had pledged not to deploy such missiles but that the US had resumed their production, brought them to Denmark for exercises and also taken them to the Philippines.
US to start deploying long-range weapons in Germany in 2026
https://arab.news/6ff3b
US to start deploying long-range weapons in Germany in 2026
- Ground-based missiles with a range exceeding 500 km were banned until 2019 under a US-Soviet treaty signed in 1987
- The US withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019 saying that Moscow was violating the accord, a charge Russia denied
Nigeria signals more strikes likely in ‘joint’ US operations
- Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country
LAGOS: Nigeria on Friday signalled more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country.
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises in its north, where jihadists have been waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed “bandit” gangs raid villages and stage kidnappings in the northwest.
The US strikes come after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts.
Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
“It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.”
Targets unclear
The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command, using an acronym for the Daesh group, said “multiple Daesh terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.
US defense officials later posted video of what appeared to be the nighttime launch of a missile from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.
Which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were targeted remains unclear.
Nigeria’s jihadist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast of the country, but have made inroads into the northwest.
Researchers have recently linked some members from an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighboring Niger and Mali.
Other analysts have disputed those links, though research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.
Those described as Lakurawa also reportedly have links to Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a rival group to ISSP.
While Abuja has welcomed the strikes, “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No’ from Nigeria,” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO.
Amid the diplomatic pressure, Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.”
Tuggar said that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu “gave the go-ahead” for the strikes.
The foreign minister added: “It must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”
