NAfter the special meeting of the Defense Committee on the possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine on Monday, there may have been a betrayal of secrets. This involves technical details regarding target data planning for the Taurus cruise missiles, which were discussed in the secret part of the meeting and apparently later appeared in a media report. The committee chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP) announced criminal action because of the incident. She wrote on Platform
Since Strack-Zimmermann’s statement is a response to a comment by Green Party politician Agnieszka Brugger on an article, it is also clear what she is referring to: a text from the Internet portal T-Online, which deals with possible reasons why Chancellor Olaf Scholz Does not want to deliver Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. Accordingly, the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Carsten Breuer, addressed “particular risks of a delivery for Germany’s security interests” in the secret part of the special meeting.
A rumored skills gap
It had already become clear through earlier reports and also the conversation between senior Air Force officers that was intercepted by Russian secret services and later published that the programming and target planning of the Taurus is highly complex; A lot of data needs to be added together for mission planning. According to T-Online, Breuer now stated that processing the amount of data was so complex and demanding that it might only be processed “by special technical systems”. In addition, Breuer stated that there were only a limited number of suitable systems available for this purpose – if they were also sent to Ukraine, there would supposedly be a capability gap. T-Online quotes “a person familiar with the matter” as saying that it would affect “the operational capability of the German armed forces.” Apparently there was “silence in the room”.
However, the article also states in a qualifying way that the Ukrainians might apparently also be sent a Taurus version with more limited capabilities that requires significantly less data.
Scholz has publicly rejected the delivery on the grounds that he does not consider the system to be useful without German soldiers, but neither wants to send German soldiers for it nor in any other way associate Germany with the selection of targets that Ukraine attacks.
The Green Party politician Brugger had commented on the T-Online article on To put it mildly, they are very distorted.”
Apparently other politicians did not draw the conclusion from the meeting that a delivery of Taurus cruise missiles was prohibited in the sense of endangering German security. A statement that was published on Thursday following the Taurus debate and was supported by numerous Green MPs even refers to the committee meeting on Monday – only with a completely different conclusion: “The special committee meeting of the Defense Committee on March 11, 2024 encourages us “in the conviction that Germany can and should also provide these capabilities with the Taurus cruise missile,” it says.
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