As of: March 6, 2024, 10:39 a.m
By: Christian Deutschländer
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The Taurus, which the traffic light coalition is arguing about, is one of the Bundeswehr's most dangerous weapons.
Too dangerous to give to Ukraine?
A visit to the manufacturer.
Schrobenhausen - The thing that is supposed to decide wars has a gentle dog's snout.
And big eyes.
But there's nothing cute about it.
Behind the eyes are high-resolution cameras that mercilessly spy on their target, behind the dark nose is a GPS sensor, and behind both 500 kilograms of explosives.
It is a deadly weapon, one that the entire continent is now talking about.
“Do not touch,” is written on the Taurus muzzle.
No, I'd really rather not.
If you want to see or even understand this weapon, you don't have to go far.
An hour towards Augsburg, through Kühbach, into a forest before Malzhausen.
There is a dead end road in the middle of the forest, no company sign.
On this inconspicuous piece of forest, but upon closer inspection it is surrounded by high fences and very attentive security guards, the defense company MBDA built hundreds of high-tech weapons until 2019.
The production lines for supplies are still here, and the know-how of the programmers is here.
An exhibit of a Taurus cruise missile in the showroom of the defense company MBDA.
© Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa
The war in Ukraine brought a turning point - also for the manufacturer of the Taurus
Thomas Gottschild circles the lying Taurus in his company headquarters.
Unimpressed, he's not someone who would still be amazed at the snout or the enormous dimensions.
But the MBDA managing director knows how the view of his work and his products has changed.
“We always talked about very abstract threats and scenarios,” he says.
Now, with the war in Ukraine, we are suddenly experiencing a real “turning point”: the need to be able to specifically defend oneself, calls for more weapons, more ammunition.
“We need more of everything.”
Because it is now a question of whether or not to deliver the system to Ukraine, many eyes are suddenly turning to MBDA, a European company with billions in sales and a good 1,000 employees at Schrobenhausen alone.
Gottschild doesn't want to get involved in the political debate, he says politely, and then he does a little.
He says that MBDA is ready to reproduce Taurus.
That we have been in discussions with Ukraine for a long time and that we can support a possible deployment at any time.
And when asked, he also said: Yes, you could operate Taurus abroad without having to send German soldiers along.
“The customer will be trained so that they are technically able to use Taurus on their own.”
This is exciting because it takes away an argument from the opponents: having to send soldiers to the Ukraine war zone in order to somehow become a party to the war.
But the second concern remains: Which targets can the system fly to, and how deep into Russia can a German weapon kill?
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Taurus is one of the most dangerous Bundeswehr weapons - Ukraine could hit Russia and Crimea
If you let Gottschild and his people explain Taurus to you, you won't get an answer.
But learn a lot.
It's a weapon system that only experts had heard of last year.
Now half-laymen are mulling over the technical terms “cruise missile”, the type designation KEPD-350, or “Taurus” – one of those artificial nicknames that the industry uses to designate its products (“Leopard”, “Puma”, “Tiger”) “) provides.
This is just the abbreviation for “Target Adaptive Unitary and Dispenser Robotic Ubiquity System”.
And sounds powerful, the Latin word for bull (and Greek: Tauros).
Now the Taurus is one of the Bundeswehr's most dangerous weapons.
They are drones that are clipped under an aircraft and launched from there.
Because they fly up to 500 kilometers, they can be shot down from Ukrainian airspace and reach Russian targets or those in occupied Crimea.
Bundeswehr simulated Taurus attack on Crimean bridge
The missiles, five meters long and weighing almost 1,400 kilograms, head towards their target with their own engine.
Four independent navigation systems guide them in autonomous low-level flight at a height of less than 50 meters - where enemy air defenses can hit them hard.
Upon impact, a warhead system (“Mephisto”) that weighs almost 500 kilos explodes.
This generates so much force that large bunkers can be breached, for example Russian ammunition depots.
Step one: a first charge blasts a gap in the concrete.
Step two: A metal rod containing 400 kilos of explosives penetrates the gap and explodes.
What the Bundeswehr has already done (for example in the military phone call overheard by the Russians) is an attack on the pillars of the Crimean Bridge.
“Destroys every high-value target,” says the MBDA experts.
The price for this is high.
Around one million euros per Taurus.
The Bundeswehr has ordered around 600 of them since 2004.
Up to 100 of them would be given away, said a soldier in the overheard conference.
Markus Söder visits Taurus manufacturers - and advocates delivery to Ukraine
Politicians will decide what will become of the high-tech weapon from the Upper Bavarian Forest.
Gottschild also had Markus Söder with him yesterday, the CSU boss, who is now a supporter of a delivery.
Taurus, says Söder, is the most deterrent thing Germany has to defend itself.
It is incomprehensible not to send them to Ukraine.
“Without that, there may be no chance for Ukraine to defend itself.” The opponents of the delivery, i.e. Chancellor Scholz, behaved “obstinately”.
Söder also walks around the Taurus and even touches the miraculous snout.
He doesn't enjoy it, he then says, the situation is serious.
And: “This weapon must be used.”