WASHINGTON, July 11 (Reuters) - France, Germany, Italy

and Poland signed a letter of intent on Thursday to develop

ground-launched cruise missiles with a range beyond 500 km (310

miles), aiming to fill what they say is a gap in European

arsenals exposed by Russia's war in Ukraine.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington

after the signing ceremony, French Defence Minister Sebastien

Lecornu said the new missile was meant to serve as a deterrent.

"The idea is to open it up as widely as possible," he told

reporters, and suggested Britain's new Labour government could

join. "It has value, including on a budgetary level, because it

obviously also allows the various costs to be amortized."

A first draft of the weapon might be sketched out by the end

of the year, he said, with the specifications such as the range

to be worked out in more detail later.

He was speaking one day after Washington and Berlin

announced they would begin deploying U.S. long-range missiles on

German soil in 2026, including the SM-6, Tomahawks and

developmental hypersonic weapons.

The deployment, condemned by Moscow as a "very serious

threat" to Russian national security, is seen as a stop-gap

solution until Europe has its own long-range missiles ready.

Cruise missiles with a range of several hundred km have had

a revival since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with

Moscow launching cross-border strikes and Kyiv hitting back at

targets in Russian territory.

Europe's existing stocks of cruise missiles include weapons

launched by fighter jets, such as Britain's Storm Shadow,

France's Scalp and Germany's Taurus with a range of some 500 km.

LOW-FLYING MISSILES

Unlike ballistic missiles, cruise missiles fly low, making

them harder to detect by radar.

A military source said the aim was for the new ground-based

missile to have a range of 1,000 to 2,000 km to meet NATO

demands for such a capability.

Paris has suggested basing the weapon on a modification of

its existing naval cruise missile MdCN (Missile de Croisiere

Naval), made by European defence company MBDA that also produces

Taurus, Storm Shadow and Scalp.

MBDA, owned by Franco-German Airbus, British BAE

Systems and Italian Leonardo, has been

working on the development of an MdCN modification that could be

fired from truck-mounted rocket launchers.

The development of a missile with a range exceeding 500 km

means European NATO allies will in effect reintroduce a category

of weapons banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces

Treaty until 2019.

The INF treaty signed in 1987 outlawed nuclear and

conventional ground-launched missiles with a range between 500

and 5,500 km. It eliminated a whole category of weapons.

Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic also

destroyed their missiles in the 1990s, followed later by

Slovakia and Bulgaria.

The U.S. quit the INF Treaty in 2019, saying Moscow was

violating the accord, citing Russia's development of the 9M729

ground-launched cruise missile, known in NATO as the SSC-8.

Russia denied the accusation and imposed a moratorium on its own

development of missiles previously banned by the INF treaty.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month Moscow

should resume production of intermediate and shorter range

nuclear-capable missiles after the U.S. brought similar missiles

to Europe and Asia.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)