Kyiv appealed to the German authorities with a request provide Taurus cruise missiles with a range of 500 km, Reuters reported, citing a spokesman for the German Defense Ministry. Official Berlin has not yet announced whether it will transfer long-range missiles to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Russian media shows on the map how far the missiles already transferred to Ukraine can reach and which it can receive.
What do we know about Taurus missiles
Taurus KEPD 350 missiles are launched from aircraft – the Su-24s available for Ukraine could probably be suitable for this, although it will take time to equip them, admitted a researcher from IMEMO RAS, an expert on Russian Council for International Affairs (RIAC). in a conversation with Russian media Alexander Ermakov.
Earlier, the Armed Forces of Ukraine already managed to adapt the Storm Shadow missiles received from the UK for Su-24 fighters, Yermakov recalled. “So it’s probably possible that the Taurus (adapts), it’s just going to take a while. but rockets can be used this way,” the expert explained.
The missile will also be able to be carried by modern Western fighters if they are handed over to Ukraine.
In addition, it cannot be excluded that in the future Ukraine and, first of all, its “support group” will try to integrate modern Western-made cruise missiles with ground-based launchers, Dmitry Stefanovich, a researcher at IMEMO RAS, tells Russian media. “So far it’s been just talk and mock-ups at exhibits, but technologically there are probably no big hurdles to that. We see how the potential of long-range precision weapons gradually increasing,” he said.
Taurus cruise missiles are jointly produced by the European defense company MBDA and the Swedish company Saab Bofors Dynamics, capable of reaching speeds of up to 900 km / h and carrying warheads weighing 480 kg.
Taurus has not yet been used in military conflicts.
Will Germany cede the Taurus to Ukraine
Deliver Taurus missiles to Kiev in May urged Member of the Bundestag Foreign Policy Committee Roderich Kizewetter. Ten years ago, around 600 missiles were purchased for the German army, of which 150 are in service, he said.
The question of transferring Taurus to Ukraine will probably require long internal political discussions in Germany, believes Dmitry Stefanovich. He noted that Germany values ​​its own high-tech developments in the field of armaments and is afraid of their leaks. This is also why there are not as many export contracts for Taurus yet, the analyst added.
Beyond the German Taurus Missiles There is Spain and South Korea.
What missiles does Ukraine have
May 11, the head of the British Ministry of Defense confirmed transfer of Storm Shadow stealth cruise missiles to Ukraine. The flight range of its export version is limited to 250 km, which is three times longer than the projectile range of the HIMARS Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) available to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Since the fall of 2022, Ukraine has been asking the United States to supply HIMARS with ATACMS guided tactical ballistic missiles with a range of up to 300 kilometers.
May 30 US President Joe Biden declared that the transfer of ATACMS to Ukraine is under consideration. “Americans do not want to spend ATACMS because these missile systems are no longer produced, and a new model of the missile is still under development, its serial production has not been established,” says military expert Alexander Ermakov.
There are several possible reasons why the West transfers air-launched cruise missiles, in particular the Storm Shadow, to Ukraine, but refuses to transfer ATACMS ballistic missiles, argues Dmitry Stefanovich. In his opinion, the stock of air-launched missiles can be large and they have to be spent on making new ones, or it is easier to bring ground launchers to the border and strike deep into the internationally recognized territory of Russia.
“As far as can be seen, the Western partners, despite the active support of Ukraine, are still interested in limiting the territory of the conflict within the so-called “internationally recognized” borders of Ukraine, because otherwise an escalation quite serious could happen,” notes Stefanovitch.
How the transfer of long-range missiles to Ukraine will change the course of hostilities
The supply of Taurus missiles to the Ukrainian armed forces in addition to the existing arsenal is hardly capable of fundamentally changing the course of the conflict, Yermakov believes. According to him, Kyiv has a problem of lack of air-launched missile carriers. “Ukraine has very few aircraft carriers (for air-launched missiles), probably only a few SU-24 (fighter) units equipped for it, so they (the Armed Forces of Ukraine) use them for point strikes on important targets: infrastructure facilities, command points,” explains the expert.
Taurus deliveries will not significantly affect the fights, agrees Dmitry Stefanovich. “Overall, we are talking about replacing the weapons used by Ukraine,” says the expert. He clarified that Taurus is “generally the development of the same generation and the same ideology as Storm Shadow”, and will therefore have no qualitative or quantitative impact on the course of the conflict.
“At the same time, it is clear that this (transfer of Taurus) will become another problem (for Russia), and it will be necessary to identify the areas of accumulation of weapons transferred to Ukraine, to hit the carriers of missiles, but these are the same tasks that I would like to believe are currently being carried out with relative success,” Stefanovich concluded.
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