German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has once again spoken out against the supply of long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, citing their ?special range? and the fact that there is no particular need for it.
@lusterko The Germans are ducking worthless. Paid off by Putin with the pipeline. It was a mistake to let them re-unify. They should remember when the Soviets occupied their country
The taurus is a bunker buster not a ordinary cruise missile. And to my knowledge Russians aren’t hiding in bunkers with 3 meters Reinforced concrete on top…
Also its kinda capable of striking the Kremlin directly so not exactly deescalating…
No difference to Storm Shadow here. Both are indeed mostly identical as they are parallel developments based on the same original French-German cruise missile project (APACHE). They even share the same inside joke of constructing rediculous acronyms for their bunker breaching warhead (“BROACH”/“MEPHISTO”).
The actual difference is that while both have ranges >500km there is a limited range export version of Storm Shadow/Scalp (France exports to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt and others) not violating international export restrictions (thus the producers have a tested and certified way to limit the range) but none for Taurus.
No, Germany will not export 500km range missiles with a warhead of that size. No one will, because there are treaties (to limit tech that can be used for long-range nuclear/chemical weapons) to prevent this. They will also not have the producers develop, test and roll out modifications to limit the range of a few for export when they only own 150 in total. Everything else is just the usual propaganda narrative (including German opposition pretending there are 450 more that can be made available quickly… sure, they bought 600 originally nearly 20 years ago, did the usual pilot training with live ammunition for nearly two decades yet magically those missile weren’t used but sit somewhere on a shelf…)
