Posted on 05/22/2019 1:19:42 AM PDT by blueplum
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey’s defense minister said it was preparing for potential U.S. sanctions over its purchase of Russian S-400 missile defense systems, even while he said there was some improvement in talks with the United States over buying F-35 fighter jets....
...Akar said linking the S-400s purchase with that of the F-35s is “another hurdle” and noted that nine NATO partners have a stake.
“There is no clause anywhere in the F-35 agreement saying one will be excluded from the partnership for buying S-400s,” he said. “Turkey has paid $1.2 billion. We also produced the parts ordered from us on time. What more can we do as a partner?”
In trying to persuade Turkey to give up the Russian missiles, the United States has offered to sell its rival Raytheon Co. Patriot missile defense systems....
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Turkey is becoming complex: openly allied with the Russian axis, playing nice with NATO.
I would suggest that this entire deal is being made into a situation where Turkey expects some massive discount on the Patriot missile system. I don’t see why you’d (the President) go and offer some discount. Maybe if Turkey had some real adversary existing, this would all matter, but no one in the entire region has interest in invading or getting aggressive with Turkey.
Mmmm... the Patriot system is (at least on paper) nowhere near as good at detecting stealthy aircraft. Export Patriot batteries don’t have the datalink capability to form a virtual very large array and even the export models of the S-400 do.
The deal with Russia is to manufacture both the S-400 and the S-500 systems, as well as buy SU-57s ... As far as Turkey is concerned, the purchase of the S-400 part is a done deal.
Let me get this straight.
Turkey is in NATO.
NATO is designed to defend against Russia.
Turkey is buying it’s missile defense system from...Russia?
There are no shortage of NATO member states that have Russian weapons, so it’s not just Turkey.
Also worth noting that the other way around works too - Britain sold the Rolls Royce Nene jet engine to the Soviets while the Brits were a member of NATO and thus enabled ALL the post MiG-9 fighters and bombers our troops have had to face for the past half century.
The US and it’s allies (so far) are flying the F-35 in non-stealthy modes as much as possible so that the Russian SAM radars can’t get a ‘signature’. Turkey, if they get the S-400 AND the F-35 — will have the full-package. They can develop radar data that they can then sell to the Russians, Chinese. Not good.
Frankly the inertia with regard to Turkey is maddening. They should have been chucked out of NATO several years ago.
It’s simple. Buy weapons from our enemy (Russia) and you become our enemy and we then have the right to impose sanctions.
Why are we in NATO?
Europe hates us. Let them be on their own.
Turkey was accepted into NATO due to its geographic position making it probably the second most indispensable member after Germany. Another overlooked aspect is that Turkey has enormous military comparing to its size. It is basically only second to US militarily in NATO.
Quite well aware of the reasons that Turkey WAS a member of NATO. But since they’ve purged their military Turkey cannot be expected to carry their own weight within the alliance. Then there is the Islamist leading the country who appears to be quite popular. My point is that the rational for Turkey being in NATO has expired along with the alliance itself (no Soviet Union).
That sounds legit.
Although the military is still only second to US in NATO.
Invoke NATO all day long, if you wish.
But the US must never sell the F-35 to
Turkey.
Thanks for the link - very sobering.
Eastern Europe using legacy weapons I can understand.
But, the UK selling jet engines for MIGs, and the Turks buying a Russian missile defense system AFTER buying F-35s from the USA, is incomprehensible.
You may want to go look at India’s mix of gear. They buy and have in service American and Russian gear and they’re very good with it. So good that in exercises, they’ve shot down F-22s with their Su-30MKIs.
As for the Brits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Nene
“A total of twenty-five Nenes were sold to the Soviet Union as a gesture of goodwill - with reservation to not use for military purposes - with the agreement of Stafford Cripps. Rolls-Royce were given permission in September 1946 to sell 10 Nene engines to the USSR, and in March 1947 to sell a further 15. The price was fixed under a commercial contract. A total of 55 jet engines were sold to the Soviets in 1947.[8] The Soviets reneged on the deal after the Cold War broke out in 1947, and reverse engineered the Nene to develop the Klimov RD-45, and a larger version, the Klimov VK-1, which soon appeared in various Soviet fighters including Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15.”
Russian engineers working on the MiG-9 couldn’t get their jet engines to last no matter what they tried, so they went to Stalin to get permission to buy in jets from somewhere - specifically Britain, who had just tossed Churchill and elected leftists/socialists. Stalin was displeased by their engineering failure but gave them permission to attempt to buy the jet engines - not expecting any success, but worth them trying. He was quoted as saying, “What fool will sell us their secrets?” Much to his disbelief, it turns out the clueless lefty Brits were that fool.
A Brit RN veteran tells the entire story better than I can, in this video - from 0:34 to 6:25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUT5fXmST0o
Depending on your age, you might not realize that India is a fairly recent convert to being an American ally.
In spite of being a “democracy,” after independence, India's closest ally was the Soviet Union until it collapsed around 1990.
Believe it or not, the USA backed anti-India Muslim dictators in Pakistan for almost 40 years!
Never trust a Turk.
Depending on *your* age, you might want to remember that India was an American ally from 1941-1945...
India has gone back and forth between being a US ally and not, mostly due to the vagaries of US politics. Sometimes we’ll sell them what they want to buy and they’ll buy from us. Sometimes we say no for various reasons and they go buy from the Russians.
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