Germany Arming as Coalition Shrinks: €12B Strike Plan

Germany’s security state is beginning to look larger than the political coalition behind it. After an explosive drone was found at Leipzig/Halle airport and a suspected Russian plot drove drone-company chief Stefan Thumann into hiding, Berlin outlined a €12 billion long-range strike programme. The plan combines cheaper cruise missiles from 2027, US Tomahawks on Typhon launchers later in the decade and a British-German system intended to reach 2,000 kilometres. Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also travelled to Ukraine with at least €50 million in humanitarian aid and further support for air defence.

The strategic logic is plain. Security scholar Carlo Masala argues that Germany is targeted because it has become a central pillar of European support for Ukraine. The Leipzig device, found beside a Ukrainian transport aircraft, turned that claim into a physical vulnerability. A country that moves weapons and aid through civilian airports must protect logistics nodes as part of national defence. Longer-range weapons may impose costs on an attacker; they do little for the airport employee who had to bring down an armed drone because institutional responsibility was unclear.

Germany is financing this harder posture from an economy that has barely moved. Growth was only 0.2 percent in 2025 and manufacturing employment fell by 144,100 in the year to mid-2026. The car industry lost 42,300 jobs, or 5.8 percent of its workforce, leaving 691,500 positions, the lowest number since 2005. The Bundesbank notes that energy-intensive industry, engineering and vehicle production have borne disproportionate losses since 2019. BMW, Siemens, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche joined business groups demanding faster reform as gas storage sat near 50 percent, its lowest mid-August level in years.

The political response is being tested in Saxony-Anhalt. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said a government led by her party would seek withdrawal from the euro and Schengen, close borders and reverse core European commitments. The AfD is polling above 40 percent before the September 6 election, and officials are discussing how to shield intelligence and sensitive administration if Ulrich Siegmund forms the first AfD state government. Those plans may be prudent. They also reveal that Germany’s constitutional order is preparing to govern around an elected executive rather than through it.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has promised a rapid package on pensions, tax, bureaucracy and digitalisation, but 54 percent of Germans told YouGov they expect him to leave before the 2029 election. Coalition arguments over health, climate and pensions resumed before a cabinet retreat, while the AfD converted industrial anxiety and migration into a case against the federal centre. A larger arsenal will require multiyear budgets, procurement discipline and public consent. Each becomes harder when businesses doubt reform and voters assume the chancellor will not finish his term.

Germany is not choosing between prosperity and defence; it is learning that each supplies the legitimacy of the other. Watch whether the €12 billion plan becomes signed contracts, whether Berlin closes the airport-protection gap, and whether the cabinet retreat produces measures companies can price into investment. The September state vote will then show whether a stronger security posture reassures the public or merely enlarges the institutions an insurgent party may soon control.