Why Germany is reluctant to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine

FOR MONTHS Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, has resisted domestic and international pressure to supply Ukraine with German-made Taurus cruise missiles, a precise, long-range munition. Desperate to help an increasingly beleaguered Ukraine, some allies have concocted clever schemes to help change Germany’s mind. David Cameron, Britain’s foreign secretary, has hinted his openness to a plan that would see Germany send Taurus missiles to Britain, thus enabling Britain to send more of its Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine. Yet Mr Scholz refuses to budge. What are Taurus missiles—and why is the German government so reluctant to send them to Ukraine?

The supply of weapons to Ukraine has slowed in recent months, in part because a bill that would send $60bn of American aid has stalled in Congress. The Storm Shadow and France’s Scalp are long-range cruise missiles similar to the Taurus. But both Britain and France have sent as many as they believe they can spare. Germany, by contrast, has 150 Tauruses it could deploy immediately.

The Taurus is a particularly potent weapon. It has a range of 500km, compared with less than 300km (at least officially) for Scalps and Storm Shadows. It flies less than 50 metres above the ground, which makes it hard to detect by radar. It is accurate to within five metres. Taurus missiles do not require a satellite signal: they use terrain-contour matching—comparing images of the ground to a library of images—and high-precision radar to navigate, making them less vulnerable to electronic jamming. Their long range also makes them safer for the pilots of the fighter jets who must carry and launch them.

Taurus missiles could be highly effective against command posts and logistics hubs, as well as the strategic Kerch Bridge that links Crimea to mainland Russia (although that particular target would probably require a large salvo). Christian Mölling of the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin think-tank, calls them a real “bunker-breaker”. The missiles have advanced fuses capable of counting how many layers they have penetrated. This means they can do more damage to complex targets—like bridges.

Yet Mr Scholz argues that supplying Taurus missiles would make Germany a “party to the war” because, in his view, Bundeswehr soldiers would need to be on the ground to train the Ukrainians. Not everyone agrees: some contend that Taurus Systems, the company that makes the missiles, a subsidiary of MBDA, a European consortium, and of Sweden’s Saab Dynamics, could do the teaching, they say. German officials, for their part, point to other constraints, such as Ukraine’s dwindling stock of fighter jets capable of carrying the missiles.

Mr Scholz is under domestic pressure, too. Annalena Baerbock, his Green foreign minister, has said the exchange with Britain is “an option”. Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany’s main opposition party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), wants Germany to send Tauruses to Ukraine as soon as possible. On March 14th the Bundestag will vote on a CDU motion on the matter. Some prominent members of the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP), the coalition partners to Mr Scholz’s Social Democrats, have said they will back it. If enough do so to enable it to pass, it will be a devastating blow to Mr Scholz’s government.

But Mr Scholz shows no sign of buckling, and he has the public on his side. In a poll by ARD Deutschlandtrend conducted on March 7th, 61% of respondents opposed the supply of Taurus missiles to Ukraine (though a majority of Green and FDP voters were in favour). The British proposal might have offered the chancellor a way out, but he seems disinclined to take it.

Mr Scholz has in the past bowed to pressure to send powerful German weapons to Ukraine, such as the Leopard tanks. And the Taurus missiles have anyway acquired a totemic status that for some may seem a distraction from Ukraine’s desperate need for lower-tech artillery shells. But the chancellor seems in no mood to change his mind.■