France is apparently looking at the possibility of deploying air-launched nuclear weapons to Germany, a consideration that’s being made amid growing concerns that the United States will no longer guarantee European security under NATO. Broader discussions about nuclear deterrence among European leaders point very clearly to the deepening crisis in the transatlantic alliance under U.S. President Donald Trump, emphasized by calls from German leader-in-waiting Friedrich Merz for talks with his British and French colleagues about European “nuclear sharing or at least nuclear security.”
According to a report in the British newspaper The Telegraph, which cites an unnamed French official, “Posting a few French nuclear jet fighters in Germany should not be difficult and would send a strong message” to Russia, which would aim to bolster Europe’s nuclear deterrent.
While it’s unclear how seriously the proposal is being discussed at the highest levels in France, there is a logic behind raising the idea at this point in public.
In France, there is now an increasing focus on building up Europe’s capacity to provide a defensive bulwark against Russia, as Trump shifts to embrace Moscow. The result has been a growing rift between the United States and its European NATO allies, with differing positions on the continued provision of support for Ukraine looming large.
Evidence of this fractious relationship was provided in a meeting between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in Washington yesterday, in which Ukraine was again atop the agenda. Trump refused to provide security guarantees to Ukraine once a potential peace deal is signed.
Macron warned Trump against a “surrender” of Ukraine, while the U.S. president claimed that Putin “wants to make a deal” that might include European peacekeepers. The talks took place just hours after the United States voted against a United Nations resolution drafted by Ukraine and the European Union condemning Russia for its invasion.
Macron interrupted Trump and corrected him on how much Europe spends on defense and he also called on Europe to do more collectively to protect the continent.
Now, it seems, stationing French nuclear weapons in Germany is being assessed as one way of extending Europe’s deterrence, in the potential absence of U.S. security guarantees.
Before his meeting with Trump, Macron had talks with Merz, who is expected to be the next German chancellor after winning elections in the country last weekend.
For his part, Merz has also been promoting the idea of increased European independence from U.S. security guarantees, including extended nuclear protection from France and the United Kingdom — the only two NATO countries in Europe with sovereign nuclear deterrence capabilities.
“We need to have discussions with both the British and the French — the two European nuclear powers — about whether nuclear sharing or at least nuclear security from the United Kingdom and France, could also apply to us,” Merz said last week.
He then went on to warn that the United States was now “indifferent to the fate of Europe.” This statement came after U.S. Vice President JD Vance had suggested that American troops might be pulled out of bases in Germany, where they have been ever-present since the end of World War II.
The Telegraph story cites German diplomats as suggesting that the French proposal to station their nuclear weapons in Germany could prompt the United Kingdom to do the same. Currently, however, the United Kingdom relies exclusively on a submarine-based nuclear deterrent, based around Trident 2 D5 missiles.
France, meanwhile, has both submarine-launched ballistic missiles and air-launched nuclear missiles of its own design. More importantly, these weapons are technically independent of NATO nuclear planning, unlike the British nuclear deterrent, which is also closely intertwined with that of the United States. How this would all play out when confronted by the realities of a nuclear conflict involving NATO is unclear, but it does at least provide Paris with more flexibility when it comes to discussions of how its nuclear umbrella might be extended to European NATO allies.
The suggestion of “a few French nuclear jet fighters in Germany” would involve French Air and Space Force Dassault Rafale multirole fighters, armed with ASMP-A standoff missiles. These are part of France’s Forces Aériennes Stratégiques (FAS, Strategic Air Forces), which were established back in 1964.
In fact, during the 1960s, France had F-100D/F Super Sabre jet fighters stationed at two bases in West Germany, armed with U.S.-supplied tactical nuclear bombs.
However, the ASMP-A is a sovereign capability and not part of the ‘dual-key’ arrangement that still provides U.S.-supplied B61 nuclear bombs for use by NATO air arms in Europe.
Currently, the French Air and Space Force’s nuclear assets are based around roughly 50 two-seat Rafale Bs, which are located at Saint Dizier-Robinson Air Base and are supported by a fleet of Airbus A330 MRTT Phénix aerial refueling tankers. Three air bases are equipped with secure weapons storage for the ASMP-A missiles: Saint-Dizier, Istres, and Avord.
As well as two air force squadrons with nuclear-tasked Rafale Bs, the French Navy also operates navalized Rafale Ms from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, which can also be armed with ASMP-A.
As for the missile itself, this is a medium-range supersonic standoff cruise missile equipped with a thermonuclear warhead of around 300 kilotons. Its liquid-fuel ramjet engine powers it at speeds of Mach 3 over a maximum range of around 500 kilometers (310 miles), depending on the flight profile. In 2015, the then-president of France, François Hollande, confirmed that France had 54 operational ASMP-A missiles.
Clearly, a detachment of aircraft and missiles at an air base in Germany would be a significant burden on France’s hard-worked Rafale fleet, although it would not be impossible. At the same time, France is also preparing to add to its Rafale fleet as part of increasing investment in its armed forces across the board.
Last weekend, France’s Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, took to the social media platform X, calling for Europe to “accelerate our rearmament,” and outlining plans for France to buy up to 30 additional Rafales, three more frigates, more drones, and electronic warfare platforms.
It’s unclear if the French proposal is intended to supplement the U.S.-supplied weapons on German soil, but it seems more likely it’s envisaged as an emergency measure should the United States remove or scale back its critical role in the NATO nuclear-sharing arrangement. Under this, U.S.-owned B61 bombs are also housed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey, and can be employed by tactical jet aircraft from approved member states. Turkey notably hosts B61s but is not among the countries that could employ them.
At present, Germany has around 20 U.S.-owned B61 nuclear bombs at Büchel Air Base, where they are provided for the German Luftwaffe’s Tornado swing-wing strike aircraft. This base is midway through an upgrade that is adding, among others, a service area for Germany’s future nuclear-capable F-35As and a refurbished runway. Those stealth fighters were acquired by Germany primarily on the basis of them being able to continue the nuclear mission, armed with the latest B61-12 version of the bomb.
Notably, Trump has regularly spoken about the possibility of slashing the U.S. nuclear inventory as part of a future arms deal. With that in mind, a dialing back or even an ending of the nuclear-sharing program could also emerge as a significant cost-cutting measure. At the same time, it’s conceivable that such a move could be made in parallel with the likely return of B61s to the United Kingdom, which may be an attractive move to ensure there is still U.S.-provided European deterrence coverage, albeit at a lower level than now.
Whatever comes of the latest proposal, it’s the latest example of Europe’s leading NATO nations taking another look at how nuclear deterrence works on the continent and whether it should be expanded, independent of the United States.
The idea of some kind of European nuclear deterrent has also been raised in the past by France.
In fact, as long ago as 2007, France proposed talks with Germany on sharing its nuclear arsenal, although Berlin was unmoved. The theme was raised again in 2020, by Macron, who suggested a “Europeanized” French nuclear deterrence.
More recently, Macron has called for further discussions on the topic, likely to involve Germany and the United Kingdom, and, for the first time, such proposals seem to be gaining traction with European allies.
A “Europeanized” nuclear deterrence scenario, in the short term at least, would be reliant on French air-launched nuclear weapons, which are the only examples of their kind in NATO — not owned by the United States — and that offer the flexibility to be deployed at air bases across Europe — provided the local infrastructure has been upgraded to support and securely store them.
An unnamed German diplomat told The Telegraph that they considered that Merz and his CDU party — now the strongest single force in German politics — believe that “a nuclear umbrella” is needed for Europe, outside of the ‘dual-key’ arrangement with the United States. “We want to have a say in this, we should be ready to talk about this, and we are willing to pay for it,” the same diplomat added.
TWZ spoke to Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, for their thoughts on the French proposal, which he said was “understandable … given what’s happening in the United States.” But he also noted that there were more than a few questions about the plan and its utility.
“France and the United Kingdom are already nuclear members of NATO, and although the French arsenal is officially independent, it’s an illusion to imagine France staying outside a European conflict that rises to the level of nuclear weapons,” Kristensen remarked.
“France has less than 50 air-based missiles and ‘offering’ deployment in Germany would immediately raise issues about the much wider nuclear posture in Europe,” he continued, before noting the difference between France’s ‘strategic’ ASMP-A and the ‘dual-key’ B61s held by the United States in Europe that are classified as ‘tactical’ weapons.
“Would this mean that France’s air-delivered nukes are tactical after all? What would that mean for French nuclear policy that insists its nukes are not tactical? What about the other allies; why don’t they get deployment? How capable would a French bomber umbrella actually be given Russia’s much larger nuclear arsenal? Why would this have any additional reassuring impact on reassuring Germany/Europe than the current posture has? Why would it have any positive impact on Russia?”
“It’s so easy to throw up symbolic chest-thumping initiatives these days, but supporters have to be careful about creating hollow postures with commitment traps,” Kristensen observed. “If Europe wants to help deterrence and reassurance, it should focus on conventional capabilities that it can actually use and let nukes stay in the background where they belong.”
TWZ also spoke to Dmitry Stefanovich, a research fellow at the Center for International Security, IMEMO RAS, who provided his assessment of the latest French proposal.
“Clearly, France seems to be the natural provider of such a nuclear umbrella, and actually to some extent, it is already the case, judging by the language used by Macron labeling European security a French vital interest. However, I have doubts that the materialization of this umbrella can take the form of the actual deployment of nuclear weapons in Germany or elsewhere. Some sort of ‘European conventional support to nuclear operations’ seems more realistic, i.e. conventional jets, tankers, or airborne early warning and control aircraft joining the French Poker [nuclear readiness] exercise or something like that. Moreover, French Rafales from ‘nuclear’ units already participate in Baltic Air Policing missions, and something like that in practice, but labeled with ‘nuclear flavor’ and including deployment and joint flights in other European countries is also possible.”
Stefanovich also noted how the actual deployment of nuclear weapons could be promoted as a substitute if the United States does finally decide to pull its nuclear weapons out of Europe, in which case the United Kingdom would be the likely exception.
“I find this scenario very unlikely,” Stefanovich added. “But still, it might be a step towards achieving a more stable security architecture in the region, including Russia. And French forward-deployed nukes might be traded for some Russian forward deployments.”
Ultimately, it might not even take these questions to derail any plans for a deployment of French nuclear weapons in Germany, since such a move would only really be likely if the United States were to pull its nuclear weapons out of Germany — and potentially out of other NATO countries too. At this point, that doesn’t look to be on the agenda, but it’s nonetheless highly significant that European NATO leaders are at least starting to imagine a future security environment where this could happen.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com