This is a maven error. It says that it is expecting a web.xml file in your project because it is a web application, as indicated by <packaging>war</packaging>. However, for recent web applications a web.xml file is totally optional. Maven needs to catch up to this convention. Add this to your maven pom.xml to let maven catch up and you don't need to add a useless web.xml to your project:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.6</version>
            <configuration>
                <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
 </build>