Why Germany is rattled about sending its Taurus missile to Ukraine

The U.K. and France have supplied Ukraine with powerful cruise missiles but Berlin is balking at doing the same.

While the dithering from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is enraging Kyiv, there are some reasons for Berlin's caution, Politico reports.

To the untrained eye, there is little to differentiate the two missiles.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius confirmed on Wednesday during the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels that Berlin will not send the missile to Ukraine.

So why the fuss in Germany?

It's about the fuze, according to Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow and missile expert at the University of Oslo, who dug into the differing devices that each missile family uses to detonate its warhead.

The Storm Shadow/SCALP BROACH warhead system uses the so-called Multi-Application Fuze Initiation System (MAFIS), where the delay between impact and warhead detonation is set by hand. That makes it difficult to properly target complex objects like bridges, as the warhead may have to first pass through a relatively thin roadbed before impacting on the real objective — the concrete pillar holding up the whole structure.

The Taurus tackles that issue as its MEPHISTO warhead is equipped with a “void sensing and layer counting” fuze called PIMPF (Programable Intelligent Multi-Purpose Fuze), which can recognize layers of material and voids and can more effectively blow up multilayered or buried targets.

"One missile equipped with a void sensing & layer counting fuze can therefore cause the damage that previously could only be achieved with two or more accurately dropped bombs," Hofmann wrote, adding that if Ukraine gets the Taurus missile it would be able to effectively strike at the Kerch bridge linking Russian proper with occupied Crimea.

That's a key target for Kyiv, which has tried several times to bring down the bridge that is crucial to Russia's logistics and its control of Crimea.

But that's also why Scholz is reluctant to supply the Taurus. He recently called a scenario of Ukraine using the German missile to knock out the bridge an “escalation of the war.” He added that his responsibility as chancellor is to ensure “Germany does not become part of the conflict.”

Other worries

That's not the only issue causing concern in Berlin.

Storm Shadow/SCALP and Taurus both use terrain contour mapping system to remain on course in GPS-compromised environments. Berlin worries that Taurus missiles would need topographical mapping data to its targets programed into their guidance systems by Germany.

Gustav C. Gressel, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: “Ukraine would need more geodata for launching Taurus than for SCALP or Storm Shadow.” He added that “training Ukrainian soldiers on the process takes more time, because it is more sophisticated.”

But Hoffmann brushed aside the argument that helping Ukraine with mapping would be escalatory. Much of the topographical data needed for the Taurus contour mapping system is publicly available, he said.

Germany is also worried that a Taurus could fall into Russian hands.

While Paris and London have a future replacement missile already in the works, Germany plans to continue using the Taurus until mid-century. Rather than developing a Taurus successor, the platform will receive a Mid-Life Upgrade, which won’t alter the missile’s hardware but will integrate “better GPS and other software updates for greater capabilities,” Hoffmann said.

Until then, “Taurus is the only real deep strike means Germany has,” Gressel said.

There is a fear in the Chancellery and defense industry “that the Russians would get to know and counter Taurus,” Gressel said. “Or worse, a Taurus may crash unexploded and unharmed somewhere and Russians start to reverse-engineer it.”

The Taurus is also specifically engineered to counter Russian air defense systems like the Pantsir and the S-400, making it especially interesting for Russian troops to get their hands on one.

Despite Scholz's fears, pressure is growing on him to give way.

The U.S. is already supplying a small number of its ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles to Ukraine; Germany had earlier said it wouldn't move on the Taurus until the U.S. sent its own missiles.

Senior lawmakers on the Bundestag’s defense committee and within Scholz’s own Social Democratic Party are urging him to reverse his stance “immediately.”