European deep strike at Eurosatory 2026: The race is starting to take shape

At Eurosatory 2026 this June, the exhibition floor in Paris was crowded with proposals covering almost every layer of deep strike—from guided artillery rockets to conventional ballistic missiles—highlighting the abundance of projects available to Europe. With eight project initiatives in the framework of ELSA agreed on after the show, it would seem efforts are now being made to streamline this landscape by assigning roles and rationalising Europe's overall approach, hitherto fragmented, writes Viktor Szabo.

"We don't have the luxury of time. We need capabilities now to ensure we remain ready. The security situation demands it," declared NATO chief Mark Rutte this month in Ankara. "The hum of machinery must become a roar,” he added. This sentiment is representative of wider trends in the defence-industrial sector, especially in Europe. Most agree that the time of grandiose political posturing is over, the time for concrete action has arrived, with Russian aggression showing little sign of fading.

Eurosatory 2026 represented a baseline. Visitors could be forgiven for believing that Europe does not have a capacity issue at all. Hundreds of European manufacturers were there to display European might and offensive capability: guided rockets, long-range artillery, one-way effectors, cruise missiles, loitering munitions and ballistic concepts, all capable of striking deep into enemy territory, and strike fear into those who would dare test European resolve.

A turning point?

The timing of this event has proven to be significant. As the show closed, it was announced that the six countries behind European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA) had agreed to move the initiative into eight dedicated “implementation groups” (EIGs)—although their allocation among participating nations has yet to be formalised—thus providing a reinforced framework and bringing structure to what has up until now been a disparate industrial approach lacking cohesion.

The new structure matters due to this inherent fragmentation. The war in Ukraine has shown the importance of being able to hold targets at risk far behind the front line, but Europe still lacks a coherent mix of sovereign systems across the full range spectrum. A recent analysis by the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) suggests Europe's remaining capability gaps in long-range strike cannot be filled with American systems, and that existing systems such as SCALP/Storm Shadow and Taurus “should be upgraded and produced in larger numbers” and that Europe “should push ahead with the development of new long-range systems”.

The EIG groups have been assembled to do just that. They will cover airborne early warning, long-range suppression of enemy air defences, air-launched long-range strike, a European multi-missile launcher, ground-launched systems in the 300–500 km, 500–2,000 km and 2,000 km-plus categories, and low-cost effectors above 500 km. “Several clusters have now reached a level of maturity which will allow them to continue as standalone ‘ELSA Implementation Groups” the countries said.

Capacity on display

Eurosatory offered a snapshot of a market trying to organise itself, and the different systems (and ranges) EIG groups will have to juggle. At the lower end, in the rocket artillery segment, France’s Long-Range Precision Strike (FLP-T) programme saw two industrial teams vying to replace the Army's ageing LRU multiple rocket launcher. MBDA and Safran's THUNDART was selected for "exclusive negotiations” with the French defence procurement agency (DGA), announced French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin during the show. The system is intended to provide France with a new sovereign deep-strike capability designed to reach around 150 km.

Elsewhere, the 300–500 km range band remains one of the least mature segments of Europe's emerging deep-strike architecture. Non-European offers tend to dominate this bracket, such as Lockheed Martin's PrSM — shown on its HIMARS FLEX launcher — or the Chunmoo's ~500 km round (reportedly the CTM-X), offered by South Korea's Hanwha to Norway. By creating a dedicated 300–500 km ground-to-ground EIG, ELSA will now provide a framework to guide and coordinate future developments in this still largely open capability area.

But the most politically sensitive part of the debate now lies further out: between 500 and 2,000 km, and beyond 2,000 km.

A European Tomahawk?

In the 500–2,000 km category, MBDA used Eurosatory to position its Land Cruise Missile as the most immediate European answer. The company unveiled the new-generation Naval Cruise Missile–Land Cruise Missile (NCM-LCM) Mk2, describing it as having a range of "well over 1,000 kilometres, comparable to the Tomahawk." The firm asserted that the LCM combines the combat-proven Naval Cruise Missile with a land launcher to provide "a sovereign capability available in a short timescale”. The launcher consists of a four-cell missile launcher mounted on a towed trailer. MBDA estimates that it can be deployed in approximately 15 minutes, and packed up just as quickly, reducing its vulnerability to counter-battery fire. Europe is currently lacking a dedicated ground-launched cruise missile with comparable range and operational flexibility to the Tomahawk, and the LCM is designed to fill that gap.

It was presented alongside DELUGE, a low-cost one-way effector designed to suppress and saturate enemy air defences, with a range of up to 500 kilometres. The two systems were displayed together to illustrate a concept of operations in which expendable effectors open corridors for a survivable long-range cruise missile to strike heavily protected targets in high intensity scenarios.

This pairing reflects a broader geopolitical reality. For decades, European allies relied on the United States to provide deep land-attack capabilities through American systems, an assumption which now appears unsustainable. The acquisition of the NCM-LCM could afford Europe greater strategic autonomy amid growing geopolitical tensions.

Beyond 2,000 km

The 2,000 km-plus category is more complex. This is where Europe's ambitions begin to touch the quasi-strategic conventional domain. At Eurosatory, ArianeGroup and Thales unveiled a new sovereign ballistic line-up for terrestrial long-range strike capabilities. B-Strike should be developed as a sovereign ballistic strike system offering for long-range conventional missions. This places the system in a different category from cruise missiles or one-way effectors. It points towards a conventional ballistic capability potentially able to operate in the 2,000 km-plus segment identified by ELSA. That makes it relevant not only to French national planning, but also to the wider European debate now forming around the UK-Germany deep precision strike initiative however in a different timescale for the mid-2030s.

The UK and Germany have already announced plans to develop missiles capable of travelling more than 2,000 km. In March 2026, the UK Ministry of Defence announced that the future missiles would form "a family of future stealth cruise and hypersonic weapons", initially focused on ground-launched capabilities before expanding to air and naval variants. The UK's Defence Investment Plan 2026 subsequently allocated funding for the initiative, alongside investment in STRATUS and one-way effectors.

Yet the UK-German effort is still best understood as a framework under construction rather than a fully mature programme. Its public description points to a family of systems, but a combined ballistic and HGV component would require a level of industrial know-how that is not evenly distributed across Europe (ELSA is trying to change this).

ELSA's new Implementation Groups, the commitments made at the Ankara Summit and the additional resources now being mobilised all point towards a growing convergence in Europe's approach to deep strike. The challenge is no longer to define the requirement, but to field the most mature capabilities in each range band as quickly as possible, avoiding unnecessary duplication at a time when Europe's deterrence needs are becoming increasingly urgent.

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