Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen recently announced Denmark’s intent to acquire long-range strike weapons.The country, usually a model student of transatlanticism, recently chose a European solution for its air defence, signalling it might also select European-made options being developed under the umbrella of the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA).

Denmark is not alone in its pursuit as countries across Europe scramble to fill long-range munitions capability gaps. This includes tactical strikes at the combat force level to deep precision strikes (DPS) at the operational and strategic levels, reaching enemy defences and inflicting damage that, at best, deters and, at worst, severely degrades enemy capabilities and thus their abilities to wage an offensive campaign.

As member states’ defence budgets rise in response to Russian aggression and the EU announced ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030 providing €150 billion in loans through the SAFE programme and up to €650billion in fiscal space by activating the national escape clause for defence spending, countries are investing more to fill capability gaps identified in the EU’s White Paper for European defence, including DPS.

Whilst promoting the need to ‘buy European’, leadership recognises individual countries cannot build such capacities alone because of exorbitant costs for R&D and production. The EU Institute for Security Studies argues that: “The effort to strengthen Europe’s defences also hinges on whether Europeans can avoid duplication and weave their efforts into a more coherent whole. National budgets and planning co-exist with a growing number of bilateral and multilateral formas,” including ELSA.

The argument for ELSA

Lotje Boswinkel argues the Ukrainian war demonstrates that in modern warfare: “One needs to be able to strike the enemy’s staging areas, airports, radar installations, maritime ports, and logistical nodes, and possibly also an attacker’s critical economic and military infrastructure further away from the frontlines. To begin with, Europe will need to buy, stockpile, and disperse long-range weapons in much larger quantities than it currently does.” The ELSA initiative began in 2024 with France, Germany, Italy and Poland and later joined by Sweden and the UK to address Europe’s long-range capability gaps, particularly for ground-launched DPS with ranges of 1,000-2,000km. European countries mostly have air- and sea-launched missiles (although not enough), but adding ground-launched delivery systems would enable all joint strike assets to have the depth needed to surpass enemy defences.

Promoting ELSA, Sweden’s Defence Minister Pal Johnson observed: “In all honesty right now we have in Europe a defense industrial base that’s shaped for a peacetime situation, and then we look at the war in Ukraine, it’s a war of attrition, a war of warehouses. So I think there’s lots of things we need to do in order to ramp up industrial production.” Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz emphasized: ‘The importance of international collaboration for the development of deep-strike capabilities and the reduction of costs and production timelines.’

Similarly, Jiří Šedivý, chief executive of the European Defence Agency, said: “It is only by cooperating more that member states can strengthen the defence technological and industrial base, create economies of scale, and develop the defence capabilities our member states need.”

The goal behind ELSA is to select projects from the EU's Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) using a “best of athletes” approach to fill needs based on development pillars “structured in such away that the member states and their industry can contribute according to their technological strengths and operational priorities”.

Projects are expected to be European-made to reduce reliance on foreign allies, make rational use of budgets without spreading them across competing projects and pool industrial capacities to reduce costs. These noble principles have given rise to a range of projects with highly varied technical solutions and operational maturity. Journalist Martin Rosenkranz says European group MBDA is emerging as a key contributor with affiliates across Europe, but others are in the running too.

ArianeGroup presented models of its missile balistique terrestre (MBT) at the June 2025 Paris Air Show, offering ELSA a ballistic option. France is footing the almost €1 billion bill for the project through 2030, although the majority will be unblocked after 2028 if industrial risks have been removed. DefenceMinister Boris Pistorius says Germany is planning to upgrade its Saab/MBDA-made Taurus cruise missile system. The new Taurus NEO will likely increase the current 500km range which might make it ELSA-potential. Also, in May, the UK and Germany signed an agreement to develop a 2,000km DPS missile with Defence Secretary John Healey, recently saying they “have accelerated work”, but without disclosing any details on it so far.

Forthemoment,itappearsMBDA’sLCMisthe lead contender for ELSA’s first project as it is the only ground-launched cruise missile with a range of over 1,000km in advanced development. Portrayed as the European Tomahawk, LCM is based on MBDA’s battle-tested Missile de Croisiere Naval/Naval Cruise Missile (MdCN/NCM) and should be tested by 2028. Initially interested in NCM for its submarines, Poland’s Deputy Minister of National Defence Pawel Bejda recently met with Emmanuel Chiva, then Director of the French procurement agency (DGA), and the two countries signed a letter of intent for co-operation on land-based cruise missiles which might add a bilateral element to the LCM.

Has ELSA enthusiasm stalled?

It seems all the elements needed for filling DPS gaps are present. Not exactly. Projects are still lacking an adequate pace, time and sense of urgency and ELSA has seemingly disappeared from the media. This is surprising given that the need for European nations to build long-range capabilities has repeatedly made headlines from lessons learned in Ukraine. The lack of national-level momentum behind ELSA, which may in part be attributable to political leadership instability in Germany (coalition divisions), the UK (Defence Procurement Minister Maria Eagle replaced by Luke Pollard in September),and France (DGA leader Emmanuel Chiva just replaced by Patrick Pailloux), risks seriously compromising the virtuous logic that underpinned the initiative.

Selection of the “best athlete” for each segment was expected in June, and yet, as of November, no ELSA project has been announced. Despite initial enthusiasm, it seems participants are getting bogged down in details. The risk is that European solutions will face further delays because member states will turn towards American or other foreign “off the shelf” options, even if that means facing longer delivery times because of priority orders from Washington. Germany has apparently already chosen this route as Berlin reportedly plans to acquire 400 Tomahawk missiles and the Typhon system despite delivery times close to 2030 with the LCM likely in production by then.

American contractors are also trying to circumvent ‘made in Europe’ content rules. Lockheed Martin and Rheinmetall announced plans for a joint venture to manufacture missiles in Europe meaning American products are prioritized over European equivalents like the SAMP/T NG system’s Aster missiles. Such joint ventures continue reliance on American technology subject to restrictions from Washington, contradicting the principle stated by European Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, that in the EU: "We need capabilities that allow us to decide what to use, what targets to choose, and so on.”

Plus, continuing to purchase foreign options means less orders for upcoming or existing European solutions which will put projects like ELSA in further jeopardy. In order to meet the long-range ammunition needs of member states with sovereign solutions, ELSA participants must renew their initial enthusiasm and political support for the project. The “best athletes” are ready, but now need governments to finally make some decisions.

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