BERLIN, March 31. /TASS/. The production of Taurus cruise missiles in Germany has been suspended due to the lack of orders, Thomas Gottschild, Managing Director of MBDA Deutschland GmbH, the manufacturer of these missiles, said.
"It is a problem for our industry when production, as in the case with Taurus, is disrupted because our suppliers, often small and medium-sized companies, have to suspend production," he said in an interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper.
According to Gottschild, MBDA insists that the government make decision on potential contracts as soon as possible. "In this respect, we in German can be much better and quicker," he said.
He noted that when new orders are made, partner companies have to establish the production chain anew while there is a high demand for materials needed for the production of explosive substances inn the world and problems with supplies are quite possible.
When asked whether Germany will finally send Taurus missiles to Ukraine, he stressed that this is a "political decision."
Ukraine has been asking Germany to supply Taurus missiles for quite a long time. These missiles are considered to be analogous to British Storm Shadows, which have already been delivered to Ukraine. However, Taurus’ range is longer than Storm Shadow’s, reaching 500 kilometers. The German Chancellor has repeatedly rejected the idea of sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. According to him, the effective use of these missiles requires the involvement of German military personnel, and this is precisely the line he does not want to cross.
RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on March 1 that on the very day that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was giving public assurances that NATO was not now and would not in the future be directly involved in the Ukraine conflict, Germany’s top brass was in fact mulling how to carry out a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge in a way that would have no repercussions for Berlin by giving it the cover of plausible deniability. Simonyan said she had a corroborating audio recording of the Bundeswehr officers’ conversation in her possession. She later released a transcript of it, which makes it clear that the military officers discussed the Taurus missiles’ capability to hit and destroy the Crimean Bridge and the tactical details involved in preparing such an attack.