Hegseth identified no specific threats and underlined that President Donald Trump’s main mission was “American manufacturing, American made, American jobs.”
For now, Germany’s rearmament drive dovetails with that vision. Pistorius said: “Germany is investing and buying in the U.S., adding up to about $50 billion, creating growth and jobs in the United States of America.”
But Germany is using its own resources and teaming up with other European countries on defense projects. Berlin is also increasingly frustrated that the U.S. is favoring its own needs — boosting production of Tomahawk missiles to rebuild its own stocks depleted by the war against Iran — which is delaying potential deliveries to Germany.
Berlin sees the Typhon launcher system and Tomahawk cruise missiles as essential for deterrence against Russia. The acquisition would give Germany something it has never possessed: the ability to strike targets deep behind enemy lines with conventional land-based precision weapons. The problem is that the capability Germany wants depends entirely on American production.
“I made it very clear that the timelines previously discussed are too slow from our perspective,” Pistorius said after raising the issue with Hegseth. The Americans, he added, had “taken note of this positively.”
Hegseth is leading a rethink of U.S. force posture in Europe, and the Trump administration has already pulled troops out of Germany. Asked after their meeting whether he had gained greater clarity about future U.S. deployments, Pistorius was blunt: “No, not yet.”