For months, Ukraine has been imploring Germany to send Taurus cruise missiles, a powerful long-range weapon that the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is reluctant to supply because he sees a risk of escalation in the confrontation with Vladimir Putin. The Taurus appeared in the video conference conversation of four German soldiers that was intercepted and published by the Russian state media RT, a very uncomfortable leak for the German army and government.
The Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, said yesterday that the commands were joined by Singapore and “Russia probably intercepted the conversation by chance, through widespread surveillance”, according to the preliminary results of the investigation. The minister assured that the German communication systems have not been affected and that no Russian spies intervened in the call.
The Taurus missiles have a range of 500 kilometers, that is to say, they could reach targets on Russian territory, and this explains the reluctance of the German Government, which fears that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will use them in this sense. The Taurus KEPD-350, present in the Air Force of only three countries – Germany, Spain and South Korea – is fired from a combat aircraft.
The Taurus knows the target before launch, and finds it autonomously flying at up to 1,170 kilometers per hour, self-propelled by a jet engine. Its small size – it is 5 meters long and weighs almost 1.4 tons -, the fact that it flies at an altitude of only 35 meters – that is, below the radar – and its four independent navigation systems mean that be very difficult to detect by anti-aircraft defense.
According to the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), the Taurus is designed for “high value targets”, such as bunkers or command posts due to its ability to penetrate reinforced concrete walls. Therefore, the missile rises abruptly just before reaching the target and attacks it from above in a vertical dive. A first charge destroys the roof and the missile penetrates downward before the 480 kilo Mephisto warhead explodes.
Ukraine already has a cruise missile relatively similar to the Taurus, manufactured by the European consortium MBDA, and supplied by the United Kingdom (which it calls Storm Shadow) and France (where it is called Scalp). The Ukrainian army already uses it, but it has a shorter range (250 kilometers) and is manufactured in small quantities, which is why Zelensky wants Taurus. Some military analysts point out that so far Kyiv has not used these British and French missiles against Russian territory, so Scholz’s objection does not hold up.
