Taurus: Officers communicated unprotected – CSU suggests U-Committee

According to a media report, the wiretapping scandal in the Air Force is said to be due to the fact that no protected line was used for the switching conference of the officers concerned. According to dpa information, the officers spoke to each other via the Webex communication application. The Webex session was in turn sent to the soldiers’ cell phones via a Bundeswehr office landline, wrote “Bild am Sonntag”, citing security circles.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense told “Bild am Sonntag”: “There are indications that an insufficiently secure means of communication was used in view of the content that was obviously discussed. This is, among other things, the subject of further investigations.”

Taurus communication via Webex

The head of the Air Force, Inspector Ingo Gerhartz, also took part in the meeting. According to the newspaper, the security level of the details discussed is still being checked. It also needs to be clarified whether the Webex variant used is at least approved for the exchange of information at the lowest level of secrecy, “classified information – for official use only,” it said.

Meanwhile, CSU politician Alexander Dobrindt demanded explanations from Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). It is “strange” that security-related conversations “are obviously being overheard by the Russians,” said the head of the CSU regional group in the Bundestag to “Spiegel”. It is also strange that Scholz “may justify his rejection of Taurus deliveries with a misrepresentation.”

Both must be clarified as quickly as possible. “The Chancellor must explain this to the Bundestag,” demanded Dobrindt. A committee of inquiry “cannot be ruled out” either.

A 38-minute recording has been circulating since Friday in which a conversation between four German officers can be heard. The recording was distributed by the editor-in-chief of the Russian state broadcaster RT, formerly known as Russia Today, Margarita Simonyan, on the online service Telegram.

Debate about Taurus: Ukraine wishes rejected

The conversation is about the possible use of German Taurus cruise missiles, which have a range of up to 500 kilometers, by Ukrainian armed forces and their possible effects.

Ukraine has been demanding the delivery of the Taurus weapons system for months, but despite criticism, Scholz has also excluded this from the ranks of the coalition partners. He justifies his refusal by saying that Germany could be drawn into the Ukraine war, even leading to direct involvement of the German military.

However, many experts deny that such an automatism exists. Rather, the Ukrainian armed forces could very well operate and program the cruise missiles themselves.