As pressure mounts on Germany to provide Taurus long-range precision missiles to Ukraine, analysts told Breaking Defense that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s most recent argument against giving the weapon to Kyiv — namely the suggestion that German soldiers in Ukraine would be required to operate it — doesn’t fly.
“His [Scholz] argument that you would need German personnel on the ground, I don’t buy at all,” said Fabian Hoffmann, a missile expert at the University of Oslo in Norway. “I think there are many reasons to believe this is stupid. Taurus is a weapon system that was partially built for export purposes, so of course you need to enable other countries to use the system independently, they cannot rely on German soldiers.”
“There’s no technical argument why you would need German soldiers” to operate Taurus in Ukraine, said Hoffmann. “It’s simply because the chancellor doesn’t want to give up final targeting authority … and does not trust the Ukrainians not to break any promises that might be attached in terms of political restraints or targeting restrictions, attached to deliveries. That’s why he would insist that German personnel are on the ground, which he believes would be a step too far.”
Tim Lawrenson, a European defense expert, agreed that there are “probably workarounds” to avoid German troops being deployed to support Taurus operations in Ukraine, such as first pre-programming the weapons outside of the country.
Whatever Germany uses for Taurus isn't some magical technology that only works with people born in Germany, the Ukrainians can be taught how to operate it independent of Germany, the crutch of the issue here is that Scholz doesn't trust Ukraine to operate it independently without German oversight though, they don't trust Ukraine won't use it on Russia/Kerch Bridge without German oversight.
Solution? The UK has soldiers in Ukraine, tell the UK to have oversight over how Ukraine uses Taurus if you don't trust Ukrainians. In fact, this was suggested by Germany's very own Lt. Gen in the leaked call, the exact quote being "Once they [Ukrainian’s] have been trained [on Taurus], we’ll ask the Brits if they would take over at that stage" "I believe this would be the right course of action."
But Scholz likely doesn't trust UK either.
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 14 March 2024
