The extent of the drone war is underestimated, with Ukraine and Russia each using roughly 10,000 drones a day, the former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said, speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington.

“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said. “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”

For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.

But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.

“Really, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,” he said.

The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.

“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.

Washington is making “some commendable steps” toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.

“But my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,” Petraeus said.

That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”

“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.

Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech, with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components — including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable — becoming the domestic industry’s production bottleneck.

The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington’s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”

The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September.

“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

The Russian satellite, Cosmos 2612, spent more than two weeks maneuvering toward ICEYE-X36, a radar satellite operated by the American arm of Finnish company ICEYE that supplies imagery to Ukraine’s military through some of its spacecraft, then shadowed it from as close as a third of a mile through the weekend of Oct. 17.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas G. DiNanno called the Russian satellite’s behavior “threatening,” and said the country had been “intentionally maneuvering dangerously close to a commercial satellite, behaviors consistent with on-orbit weapons operations.”

Space historian and former NASA astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said that he believed it is the first rendezvous in low Earth orbit between two active satellites without one owner’s approval.

The close encounter came weeks after Air Force Secretary Troy Meink publicly confirmed that the U.S. has weapons in orbit and the Space Force picked two companies to build space-to-space reconnaissance satellites. It also followed reports that trillionaire Elon Musk — under White House orders — slowed the military-grade Starlink that Ukraine relies on, rendering some of the country’s essential air defense weapons useless.

The operation fits a wider Russian campaign of intimidation against Europe and the U.S. that lets Russian President Vladimir Putin “poke the West in the eye and watch the West do nothing,” according to Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“They prove a point – the West can’t stop me,” Swope added Wednesday during a CSIS panel on the encounter.

As the U.S. and its allies increasingly rely on commercial capabilities for national security, key assets like satellites have “become vulnerabilities that can be exploited by our adversary,” according to Greg Gillinger, senior vice president of strategy and development at Virginia-based Integrity ISR, who also spoke on the CSIS panel.

The impact of a possible satellite attack could reach well beyond one company or country, since commercial satellites now carry much of the imagery and connectivity militaries fight with, experts said. Musk’s Starlink slowdown in Ukraine showed how quickly a military force can suffer when that access is throttled without notice — and how easily local geopolitical conflicts can explode into global security crises.

On Oct. 12, commercial trackers feeding the U.S. military’s Joint Commercial Operations cell flagged the possible rendezvous when Cosmos 2612 slid into ICEYE-X36’s orbit roughly 345 miles above Earth, according to Integrity ISR’s newsletter.

On Oct. 15 and 16, the Russian satellite moved from more than 200 miles behind ICEYE-X36 to roughly 3 miles away before moving in closer and holding position through the weekend, tracking firm LeoLabs said in a statement reported by CNN.

Both satellites travel at roughly 4 miles (7 kilometers) per second, so getting two objects “within a hundred meters or even a kilometer” of each other is “the equivalent of flying in a very tight formation in an aircraft,” Gillinger said.

“Russia didn’t accidentally get within a kilometer of X36,” he said. “It is an indication of intent that they’re sending a message.”

ICEYE, whose radar satellites see through clouds, smoke and darkness, expanded cooperation with Ukraine’s military, pledging continued imagery “on tactical timelines,” according to a January statement. However, the company has not confirmed which of its satellites serve Kyiv.

Moscow has warned since the first year of its full-scale invasion that Western commercial satellites helping Ukraine could become legitimate military targets.

ICEYE said it is “aware of the situation and tracking it closely” and that its “constellation architecture is designed for continuity and resilience,” a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine earlier this week.

Russia’s intent behind the satellite maneuvers remains unclear. According to LeoLabs, an American space technology company, possible aims range from intelligence collection and close inspection to coercion and groundwork for future operations against satellites.

The maneuvers demonstrated capabilities that could be used to “inspect, characterize, shadow, or potentially interfere with another spacecraft,” though they “do not establish hostile intent,” the company said.

Analysts could not yet say whether Moscow planned an attack and then reversed course, or was orbiting nearby for another purpose entirely.

Russia could have been doing “a dry run” for a future attack, or the satellite could have been carrying a weapon, from a jammer to a laser to a projectile, Swope explained.

“Was the intent to blow up the satellite? No,” he said. “Was the intent to put some type of energy on the satellite? Probably… I don’t know why you’d need to maneuver in this way, this close, unless you wanted to do something that involved putting energy on that satellite.”

The Russian satellite has since pulled back, but not far.

It was again flying at ICEYE-X36’s altitude on Wednesday, holding roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) behind it, and could “easily close that gap again at the time and place of their choosing,” Gillinger said.

Russia could try to approach another ICEYE satellite within weeks, as two more satellites from the same launch will soon line up with the orbit of a second satellite, ICEYE-X37, according to Integrity ISR.

If they move in, “we could see another scenario where another commercial satellite is closely trailed by one of these Russian satellites,” Gillinger said.

The retreat began Oct. 18, two days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order waiving tariffs and most economic restrictions on Russia.

Swope said Trump’s move to ease sanctions “could have been a reason why Putin said, ‘You know, now’s not the time to exacerbate tensions specifically with the United States. Maybe we should pause this operation.’”

“If you’re getting close to a deal on something, why jeopardize that?” he said.

The potential for a conflict in space has been growing in recent months.

Washington “appears to lack response options” if Russia threatened U.S. military and commercial satellites with a nuclear weapon in orbit, according to the conclusions from a 2025 war-game scenario where fictional Russian space objects threatened American interests.

There is no public indication that Cosmos 2612 carries a nuclear weapon, but Swope said that there is also still no internationally recognized rule for determining if a maneuver like this one should be considered hostile — or what international standards should be followed in a response.

“Even though we all can make a good case on why this was [hostile], there’s no norm that you could point to,” he said.

Without a clear response plan or real consequences for aggression, menacing satellite moves like this one are “literally just a spigot that Russia could turn on and off” to increase pressure on adversaries, Swope said.

Russia, he added, “is going to turn it on again.”

The French and British fighter jets flew a joint mission on Tuesday during the exercise Rummy, the French Armed Forces Ministry said in a statement on Friday, calling the drill a show of growing cooperation in the framework of an agreement last year for closer nuclear cooperation and coordination between the two countries.

France is working with several European allies on a concept of “forward deterrence” amid uncertainty around United States security guarantees for Europe in the face of an aggressive Russia. While both France and the U.K. operate strategic ballistic-missile submarines as a nuclear deterrent, France has an airborne component, which the U.K. lacks, in the shape of Rafale jets carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

“Having independent nuclear forces doesn’t exclude coordination,” French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin said. “By coordinating, our nuclear forces demonstrate that they can contribute even more significantly to the overall security of the alliance and the peace and stability of the Euro-Atlantic zone.”

The British aircraft operated alongside those of France’s Strategic Air Forces over the Mediterranean, with Typhoons escorting Rafale fighters, according to the ministry. While the Rafale jets performed a simulated nuclear strike, the exercise didn’t involve any actual nuclear weapons, the ministry said.

In addition to Eurofighter Typhoon and Rafale jets, the exercise included A330 MRTT tanker aircraft, French Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Fabien Mandon said in a post on the social network X. The French and British crews took off from Saint-Dizier air base in northeastern France, and showed a “very high level of interoperability and a capability to coordinate,” he said.

Mandon’s post included a picture showing three taxiing Eurofighters, as well as a Eurofighter under a hard cover with the markings of the RAF 29 Squadron.

“This is a revolution for the Strategic Air Forces, which have always operated in complete autonomy since their creation in the 1960s,” said Etienne Marcuz, a senior analyst at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, in a post on X. He called the involvement of at least three British Eurofighter aircraft “quite significant.”

The exercise was an important step in the implementation of the Northwood Declaration, showing a determination to deter common threats together, the ministry said. France and the U.K. last year agreed to deepen nuclear cooperation and coordination, stating in the declaration that they agreed there was no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations.

The exercise Rummy took place on Oct. 20 and 21, according to the ministry. France’s Air and Space Force regularly holds simulated nuclear-strike exercises called Poker.

The U.K. and France maintain sovereign and independent nuclear forces, and decision-making regarding their use isn’t shared, the ministry said. The countries would only consider using nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances of legitimate defense,” the French ministry said.

The goal is for AI to automatically analyze refueling operations from cameras mounted on the tankers and provide “hot wash” feedback to the tanker crews.

According to an Air Force Small Business Innovation Research solicitation, the service wants a system that can “leverage advanced computer vision, machine learning, and aviation (flight dynamics) analytics techniques to automatically extract operationally relevant performance metrics from aerial refueling events, quantify deviations from desired flight profiles, and generate actionable post-flight feedback to improve aircrew proficiency, reduce human-factor-driven mishaps, and enhance mission readiness.”

The application deadline is Nov. 25.

The SBIR is focused on the KC-46 tanker, which will feature a remote vision system that will allow operators to remotely operate the refueling boom via cameras and a 3D display. Though the system has been plagued by teething problems, the Air Force says most will soon be resolved.

The system would automatically track the tanker and refueling boom, as well as the receiving aircraft. It would measure a variety of data, including position, velocity, alignment and closure rate, and assess whether they deviate from nominal parameters.

The Air Force hopes an AI-based assessment system will mitigate the biases inherent in human assessment of aerial refueling, which is among the most demanding tasks for aircrew.

“Current aerial refueling training and post-flight assessment processes rely heavily on instructor observation, pilot self-assessment, manual video review, and subjective evaluation of performance,” the SBIR noted.

The system would create visual displays to improve the performance of pilots of the aircraft receiving fuel, such as “graphic AI overlays, heat maps, event timelines, and immersive or interactive debrief environments.” It would also have the potential to integrate with other training systems, including virtual and augmented reality, simulators, mission rehearsal systems, and other computer-based training tools.

The Air Force sees this as a prototype for future AI-based training systems.

“The desired end state is an operationally demonstrated capability ready to implement for at least one type of receiver aircraft and that can support transition into existing aviation training ecosystems and provide a scalable foundation for future AI-enabled aviation performance assessment across the Department of Defense,” the solicitation reads.

The orders are for the supply of the A2CS combat vehicles and the new-generation MBT tanks and are part of Italy’s wider military modernization program, the Italian financial daily added.

Rheinmetall declined to comment.

Leonardo CEO Lorenzo Mariani said he could not confirm whether the contract had been signed “as any communication on the matter must be coordinated with our clients.”

Leonardo and Rheinmetall launched their 50-50 joint venture in 2024.

“The programme is ready to enter production from our side. We are actively working on both the tank programme and the Future Combat System (FCS), and are progressing on both in close cooperation with Rheinmetall,” Mariani said in Rome.

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the state-backed Fondo Italiano d’Investimento, he stressed the importance of tanks for the modernization of Italy’s defense, for exports and for the broader partnership with Rheinmetall.

More capable missiles could help Saudi Arabia to deter attacks by Iran and make its military more self-reliant, while possibly strengthening its position in a deadly conflict with Yemen’s Tehran-backed Houthi fighters.

But they risk fueling a regional missile race and could deepen opposition in the U.S. Congress to a U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement that has already raised concerns about proliferation.

Satellite company Planet Labs, based in the U.S., took images of the al-Duwadimi complex about 125 miles west of Riyadh between April 2025 and September 2026.

The two researchers, Sam Lair and Michael Duitsman of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, assessed that those images show a new building that houses casting pits — wells in which a mixture of fuel ingredients is poured into missile motor casings and allowed to harden.

The Saudi embassy and Information Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

The building, flanked by what appear to be walls to protect nearby structures from accidental explosions, is at least twice as large as the one believed to house the plant’s existing casting pits, Lair and Duitsman said in their assessment. The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) is a non-partisan research organization in Philadelphia.

A second new building could be used to store fuel ingredients or finished missile components, they said.

The imagery “suggests that Saudi Arabia is expanding the infrastructure at the missile production complex, likely to produce larger missiles which could deliver larger payloads or reach longer ranges,” they wrote.

Militaries favor solid-fuel missiles because they can be stored for long periods and launched more quickly than liquid-fuel systems.

Lair and Duitsman and experts from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and the CNA research and analysis organization told Reuters that the makeup of Saudi Arabia’s missile force suggests that the al-Duwadimi complex relies on Chinese technology. Lair and Duitsman said that its characteristics are also similar to Chinese missile plants.

Saudi Arabia secretly acquired about 40 liquid-fuel DF-3 ballistic missiles from China in 1987, according to a 1991 declassified CIA estimate. It displayed two of them for the first time in an April 2014 military parade, according to a YouTube video and photographs of the event.

The FPRI team also recently identified from social media videos and photos what they assessed was the wreckage in Yemen of a Saudi-fired Chinese-designed DF-15 missile.

Lair said the kingdom may now be producing the solid-fuel DF-15, and that the expansion of a1-Dumadimi is likely for the production of the longer-range DF-21 or a similar missile.

Riyadh is believed to have turned to Beijing because Washington has long restricted exports of longer-range missile systems.

The Chinese embassy and defense ministry did not respond to requests for comment. The CIA declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Missiles would alter the balance of power

Sascha Bruchmann, a research fellow at IISS, said longer-range missiles would allow Saudi Arabia to strike Iran without risking its U.S.-supplied F-15 jet fighters against Iranian air defenses.

“You’d want a system to threaten whatever is holy to Tehran … if you don’t have the political will to send an F-15 with JDAMs over Tehran,” said Bruchmann, referring to U.S.-made satellite-guided bombs. “Iran has a lead because its missiles and drones can strike Saudi wherever it wants. The Saudis could close that capability gap a bit.”

Bruchmann, who reviewed the FPRI analysis at Reuters request, concurred that the expansion of al-Duwadimi could be for producing more powerful solid-fuel missiles.

Janes, the defense intelligence company, also reviewed it and said the buildings “may suggest an effort to expand production capability or support the development of longer-range missiles.”

Saudi Arabia’s apparent pursuit of more powerful missiles comes as other Gulf powers are also seeking to expand their offensive and defensive arsenals, said Decker Eveleth, a CNA analyst who has been tracking the al-Duwadimi construction with commercial satellite imagery and concurred with the FPRI assessment.

“This is being replicated across the Middle East,” he said. “You see exactly the same thing happening in the UAE. You see the exact same thing happening in Turkey. Everybody is doing this now.”

The expansion of al-Duwadimi could have political consequences in the US by stiffening bipartisan congressional opposition to a US-Saudi agreement under which the US would help Riyadh establish uranium enrichment for power generation.

Opponents say that the deal lacks sufficient safeguards to prevent Riyadh from secretly building a nuclear weapon. The kingdom has denied any such plan.

Work began last year

The FPRI assessment said the Planet Labs imagery showed that the expansion at al-Duwadimi began in April 2025 with ground-clearing and digging for the suspected storage building. Work on the suspected casting-pit building began later that month or in early May, it said.

A December 12, 2025, photo showed what researchers assessed were two deep pits inside the building that had no roof yet.

A Sept. 18, 2026, photo shows the roof still partly missing and “heavy duty blast diverting walls” on either side to prevent accidental explosions from damaging adjacent structures.

The walls, the researchers said, are somewhat similar to those depicted in imagery of US and Iranian missile plants and “further evidence the building is for casting solid propellant motors.”

Finishing the roofs would not take long, the FPRI said, but installing casting equipment may take several months. The facility could be ready to start producing missiles as early as the end of the year.

It made another in October.

So frequent are the Chinese aircraft carrier CNS Liaoning’s publicly visible voyages that military analysts presume that the People’s Liberation Army Navy has fixed a routine that will let the relatively aged carrier help train and equip the fleet’s two more modern ones.

Still, the carrier group’s passages not far from Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines – places that have political or maritime sovereignty disputes with China – have raised alerts.

“The current voyage by the Liaoning appears to be part of an established evolving pattern of far-seas training deployments,” said Carl Thayer, an Asia specialist and emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

“The Liaoning demonstrates China’s naval military capability and political influence through its constant presence in China’s near and far seas,” he said.

The aircraft carrier led a naval task group to the western Pacific Ocean on Oct. 14 for training, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy said via China’s official Xinhua News Agency. Citing the navy, Xinhua called the expedition a “drill” and part of an annual routine training plan aimed at “testing and improving combat readiness.”

China’s state-controlled Global Times news outlet called the Liaoning’s October voyage its second in the distant seas and hailed the carrier’s long-term progress as going from a “coastal pathfinder” to a “far-sea blade.”

The vessel, categorized as a “short take-off but arrested recovery” aircraft carrier, measures about 305 meters (1,000 feet) long and with flight deck width up to 75 meters.

As of Oct. 23, the carrier group had done exercises near the southernmost Japanese outlying islands and was headed for the South China Sea near the Philippines, according to local media reports in East Asia. The reports said it went with two large destroyers and a guided-missile destroyer.

The deployments are meant to show China’s two more-modern carriers, the CNS Fujian and the CNS Shandong, how to adopt new technology, experts said.

The nine-year-old Shandong carrier would learn about “new and emerging” technology as the older Liaoning tests flight operations, sensors and modern aircraft, said Collin Koh, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“The Shandong aircraft carrier is basically an improved version of the Liaoning,” Koh said. He said the current deployment was probably “meant maybe to validate certain technologies.”

Being the oldest of China’s three carriers, the Liaoning would “not be the frontline reaction force if there were a contingency”, said Alexander Huang, chairman of the Council of Strategic and Wargaming Studies in Taipei.

China’s maritime rivals have taken notice.

The Taiwan Ministry of National Defense said in mid-October it was monitoring the possibility of large-scale Chinese military exercises nearby as an outcome of the Liaoning’s movements.

China claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to take it. The PLA has stepped up military activity in waters near the island since 2022.

In the South China Sea, Beijing has already shored up its sovereignty claims over the past two decades by building artificial islands, often for military use. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam dispute parts of the sea with China.

In Tokyo, which disputes a group of uninhabited islets with Beijing, the defense ministry said it had seen fighter aircraft taking off and landing from the Liaoning carrier 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Japan’s Ishigaki Island.

The Chinese carrier group launched and recovered aircraft in Japan’s maritime exclusive economic zone during its deployment, said Colin Karotam, senior resident fellow with the Defence Strategy Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. That activity is “uncommon,” Karotam said, though it may have taken place before.

The Chinese carrier group’s activities also began shortly before the Keen Sword 27 U.S.–Japan military exercises launched on Oct. 19. The exercises on Ishigaki are biennial and include the Philippines among other nations. China sees the United States, a treaty ally of both Japan and the Philippines, as a military rival in Asia.

Xinhua said the Liaoning’s movements in October comply with international law and “are not directed at any specific country or target.”

Arrangements are underway to transition responsibilities to the Vice Chief of Defence Force, Rear Adm. Mat Williams, who will serve as Acting Chief of Defence Force.

Air Marshal Davies said: “The resignation is for personal reasons, and results from errors of judgement made by me in the past, for which I am taking responsibility. The errors of judgement were contrary to the values of the Defence Force.

“These matters revolved around an inappropriate relationship I had when in a position of unit command, and I regret not disclosing this when I had the opportunity to do so.”

Appointed as the Chief of Air Force from 2016 before becoming the Vice Chief of Defence Force in 2018, Air Marshal Davies, born 1966, was promoted to his current rank on appointment to Chief of Defence Force on June 6, 2024.

The Chief of Army, Maj. Gen. Rose King, will act as Chief of Defence Force until Sunday before Williams takes on the role.

The Army wants contractors that can manufacture up to 10 barrels per month within three years, according to the Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Nov. 23.

Companies were asked to provide details of their ability — or their subcontractor’s capacity — to make barrels, including whether they could add “chrome bore coatings on a steel tube up to 30 [feet] long and up to 7,500 pounds in weight,” the notice said. They should also provide the maximum length and weight of tube that they could coat.

Also desired are details on a company’s boring, milling and rifling capabilities, as well as details on raw materials, such as “steel preform production, forging, guide bore, and heat treatment.”

The notice asks contractors to estimate their capacity to manufacture 155mm barrels within 18 months, and up to 10 barrels per month within 36 months. Companies should also offer a cost estimate for an “initial production quantity of 40 cannon tubes (broken down by caliber or indicating pricing for a combined/flexible mix),” the Army said.

Currently, the Army makes large-caliber barrels for howitzers and tanks only at the aging Watervliet Arsenal in New York.

While America and Europe have been focused on expanding production of howitzer ammunition to meet demand in the Ukraine war and replenish domestic stockpiles, another problem is a lack of manufacturing capacity to replace worn-out cannon barrels.

A 2024 Pentagon budget document stated that Ukraine’s heavy use of M777 howitzers created a demand for more than 30 M776 tubes per month, according to The War Zone. The document admitted that Watervliet could not keep up with demand, and asked for emergency funding to be transferred to enable a second manufacturer of barrels.

The new notice doesn’t mention how many additional barrel manufacturers are needed. However, the Army is exploring whether to replace the M777 with a weapon based on Korea’s popular K9 howitzer.

The shopping list includes the Kongsberg-made Joint Strike Missile, which F-35 fighter aircraft can carry, and the Anthem missile by U.S.-based company Covenant as a ground-launched option, Defense Minister Jeppe Bruus said.

Officials released few details, leaving open the question of when the armed forces would receive the missiles, how many of them and at what cost, broadcaster TV2 reported in a live blog of a defense ministry press conference about the planned acquisitions.

Long-range missiles are very much en vogue in Europe at the moment, as countries are equipping themselves as a deterrent against Russian aggression. Governments here consider the capability to strike back on their own all the more urgent because U.S. assistance with such weaponry in case of a conflict is considered uncertain under the presidency of Donald Trump.

The ranges of strike missiles labeled as long-range are a bit of a guessing game, as manufacturers and governments keep performance information close to their chests so as to avoid tipping off adversaries. Typically, they fall in the range of 500 kilometers to 1,500 kilometers, depending on engine and warhead configurations.

Danish officials cite a NATO contribution target as a key motivator for the envisioned weapons class, which would constitute a qualitatively new capability for the small country, according to TV2. Copenhagen is on the hook to offer the alliance a long-range strike capability by 2030, according to the defense ministry.

“These acquisitions represent a significant step toward improving Denmark’s self-defense capabilities, strengthening NATO, and enhancing our capacity to strike back,” Defense Minister Bruus was quoted as saying in an agency statement.

According to TV2, the envisioned Anthem missiles for Denmark, which have never seen combat, are to be produced in Germany. Manufacturer Covenant announced a new production site in Leipzig, Germany, last month, claiming it could churn out missiles there beginning in early 2027.

The German defense ministry has so far said only that there are talks with Covenant about buying the weapons to plug Germany’s long-range strike gap.

The manufacturer’s pitch is that Anthem missiles will be cheaper than products available on the market now. Reuters has previously reported a mid-six-figure target price per unit set by company executives during serial production.