Germany Leads 6-Nation Development of 500 km OWE 500 Plus Strike Drone for NATO Deep Fires.

Germany and five European partners agreed on February 12, 2026, to jointly develop the 500 km class OWE 500 Plus one-way strike munition under the European Long Range Strike Approach. The program aims to give NATO Europe an affordable, mass producible deep strike capability designed to overwhelm air defenses and preserve scarce cruise missile inventories.

Germany’s push for long-range, low-cost strike mass took a concrete step on February 12, 2026, when Berlin and five European partners agreed to jointly develop and produce a new family of one-way effectors under the European Long Range Strike Approach, according to Hartpunkt. The initiative, centered on the OWE 500 Plus concept, signals a deliberate shift inside NATO Europe toward industrialized deep-strike volume, weapons designed not for a handful of exquisite shots, but for repeated salvos that can strain air defenses and keep pressure on operational targets. What makes OWE 500 Plus stand out is not just the advertised roughly 500 km class reach, but the design philosophy behind it: an attritable munition that is cheap enough to be expended in numbers, fast enough to complicate gun-based interception, and accurate enough to hit meaningful targets without consuming scarce aircraft sorties or premium cruise-missile stocks.
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OWE 500 Plus is Europe's planned 500 km-class, turbojet-powered one-way strike munition built for mass salvos to overwhelm air defenses and deliver affordable deep-fire precision (Picture source: MBDA/ Army Recognition Edit)

In expert circles, the program is referred to as One Way Effector 500 Plus, and the requirement reads like a direct answer to the battlefield arithmetic seen in Ukraine: defenders win if attackers run out of missiles first. The participating nations, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, and Sweden, want a common platform that can accept national payloads and be manufactured across multiple countries to scale production quickly and preserve output if individual sites are disrupted.

OWE 500 Plus sits between classic loitering munitions and cruise missiles. Reporting tied to MBDA’s One Way Effector work points to a compact airframe with a wingspan of around 3 to 3.3 meters and an overall launch weight near 100 kg, sized for container handling and rapid assembly in the field. Unlike many piston-powered loitering weapons, the concept emphasizes turbojet propulsion, giving a cruising speed in the 400 km per hour class. That speed matters tactically because it compresses defender reaction time, increases the probability that short-range guns must fire larger bursts to achieve a kill, and pushes many air defense units toward using missile interceptors whose cost can exceed the attacker’s munition.

The payload discussion is equally pragmatic. Hartpunkt cites a roughly 50 kg class warhead, with one proposal explicitly focused on reusing conventional 155 mm artillery shells as the lethal package, a cost-saving measure that also leverages existing European munition lines and mature explosive filling processes. A 155 mm shell-derived warhead brings immediate operational utility: fragmentation effects for soft targets, parked aircraft, radar arrays, and ammunition points, and a credible option against lightly protected command posts and logistics nodes. Depending on the shell type selected nationally, the effect can be tuned toward blast-fragmentation or enhanced penetration, giving each user nation flexibility without rewriting the whole weapon.

Guidance is designed to avoid the old tradeoff between affordability and resilience. The baseline described in the related program reporting is a satellite navigation package augmented by inertial navigation, intended to remain usable under heavy electronic warfare where GNSS jamming or spoofing is expected. For operators, the critical point is workload. The intent is for a single operator to be able to deploy a double-digit number of effectors, implying preplanned missions, automated navigation to waypoints, and time-on-target coordination where multiple weapons approach from different azimuths to force defensive radars to split attention.

Operationally, OWE 500 Plus is built for the opening hours of high-intensity conflict, when NATO forces must punch corridors through layered integrated air defenses and disrupt the adversary’s kill chain. Fired from ground launchers, including simple ramps and containerized ripple fire solutions described in program discussions, the weapon gives land forces a deep strike tool that is not hostage to airbase vulnerability, tanker availability, or the political signaling that follows every combat sortie. In tactical terms, the weapon’s best use is not as a single exquisite shot, but as part of a package: massed OWE 500 Plus salvos to saturate and exhaust interceptors, paired with higher-end cruise missiles or air-delivered weapons to hit the hardest targets once the defense has been forced to reveal emitters and burn inventory. This door-opener logic aligns with the European desire to preserve scarce high-end missile stocks for decisive strikes.

For the Bundeswehr, the most consequential detail is where the system likely lands organizationally. The effort is linked to the German Army’s plan to field long-range surface-to-surface precision batteries by 2029 as part of a future Multi-Domain Task Force construct, giving the land component a modern deep fires arm rather than relying solely on allied air power. A 500 km class ground-launched effector changes the map for operational commanders by threatening second-echelon logistics, air defense reload sites, headquarters, rail transshipment points, and missile launch support infrastructure, all targets whose disruption can collapse tempo without requiring immediate close combat.

The industrial implications may be the biggest strategic prize. The European Long Range Strike Approach logic is sovereignty through volume: Europe cannot deter with deep precision strike if it can only afford dozens of weapons per year. Discussions around the One Way Effector concept describe an industrial model that borrows from civilian manufacturing to reach production rates discussed in the 1,000 units per month range, a scale that would be transformational for European stockpiles and wartime surge. Equally important, the agreement’s emphasis on production in multiple user nations spreads know-how, stabilizes supply chains, and hardens the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base against disruption. In practical terms, it also reduces dependence on non-European missile inventories and the export-control friction that can shadow foreign-origin strike weapons when governments need rapid operational autonomy.

If OWE 500 Plus succeeds, it will not replace Europe’s premium missiles. It will make them survivable and strategically usable by changing the defender’s cost calculus first. In a theater where Russia has demonstrated both massed fires and a willingness to target industrial capacity, Europe’s answer is increasingly to build weapons that are good enough, precise enough, and cheap enough to be fielded by the thousands, not the dozens. That is the quiet revolution embedded in this signature, and it is why the European defense industry is treating OWE 500 Plus as more than just another drone program.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.