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BERLIN: NATO will need more long-range missiles in its arsenal to deter Russia from attacking Europe because Moscow is expected to increase production of long-range weapons, a US Army general told Reuters.
Russia’s effective use of long-range missiles in its war in Ukraine has convinced Western military officials of their importance for destroying command posts, transportation hubs and missile launchers far behind enemy lines.
“The Russian army is bigger today than it was when they started the war in Ukraine,” Major General John Rafferty said in an interview at a US military base in Wiesbaden, Germany.
“And we know that they’re going to continue to invest in long-range rockets and missiles and sophisticated air defenses. So more alliance capability is really, really important.”
The war in Ukraine has underscored Europe’s heavy dependence on the United States to provide long-range missiles, with Kyiv seeking to strengthen its air defenses.
Rafferty recently completed an assignment as commander of the US Army’s 56th Artillery Command in the German town of Mainz-Kastel, which is preparing for temporary deployments of long-range US missiles on European soil from 2026.
At a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Monday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is expected to try to clarify whether such deployments, agreed between Berlin and Washington when Joe Biden was president, will go ahead now that Donald Trump is back in the White House.
The agreement foresaw the deployment of systems including Tomahawk missiles with a range of 1,800 km and the developmental hypersonic weapon Dark Eagle with a range of around 3,000 km.
Russia has criticized the planned deployment of longer-range US missiles in Germany as a serious threat to its national security. It has dismissed NATO concerns that it could attack an alliance member and cited concerns about NATO expansion as one of its reasons for invading Ukraine in 2022.
European plans
Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at Oslo University who specializes in missiles, estimated that the US provides some 90 percent of NATO’s long-range missile capabilities.
“Long-range strike capabilities are crucial in modern warfare,” he said. “You really, really don’t want to be caught in a position like Ukraine (without such weapons) in the first year (of the war). That puts you at an immediate disadvantage.”
Aware of this vulnerability, European countries in NATO have agreed to increase defense spending under pressure from Trump.
Some European countries have their own long-range missiles but their number and range are limited. US missiles can strike targets at a distance of several thousand km.
Europe’s air-launched cruise missiles, such as the British Storm Shadow, the French Scalp and the German Taurus, have a range of several hundred km. France’s sea-launched Missile de Croisiere Naval (MdCN) can travel more than 1,000 km.
They are all built by European arms maker MBDA which has branches in Britain, France, Germany and Italy.
France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and Sweden are now participating in a program to acquire long-range, ground-launched conventional missiles known as the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA).
As part of the program, Britain and Germany announced in mid-May that they would start work on the development of a missile with a range of over 2,000 km.

ATHENS: Greece on Friday was to enforce a three-month freeze on asylum claims from migrants arriving by boat from North Africa, to stem a surge from Libya that the government has called an “invasion.”

Conservative lawmakers, who hold a parliamentary majority, are expected to approve emergency legislation enforcing the temporary ban, allowing authorities to detain asylum seekers in camps for up to 18 months.

“We have made the difficult but absolutely necessary decision to temporarily suspend the examination process of asylum applications for those arriving by sea from North African countries,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement to German tabloid Bild on Friday.

“This decision sends a clear message, leaving no room for misinterpretation, to human trafficking networks: Greece is not an open transit route. The journey is dangerous, the outcome uncertain, and the money paid to smugglers ultimately wasted,” he said.

Greece’s migration ministry says over 14,000 migrants have reached the country this year, including over 2,000 in recent days from Libya.

“Greece cannot have boats totaling 1,000 people a day,” Migration Minister Thanos Plevris told Skai TV, adding that the country will undertake a “draconian revision” of how it deals with migrants.

Plevris – formerly a member of the far-right LAOS party and now part of Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party – has called the recent influx an “invasion from North Africa.”

The move has been criticized by rights groups as a violation of international and EU law, and opposition parties have called it unconstitutional.

Noting an “exceptional” situation, European Commission migration spokesperson Markus Lammert said on Thursday: “We are in close contact with the Greek authorities to obtain necessary information on these measures.”

Greece took similar steps in 2020 during a migration surge at its land border with Turkiye.

To manage the influx, the government could reopen camps built after the 2015 migration crisis, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said this week.

Mitsotakis also told parliament that it would build up to two additional camps on the island of Crete.