Thursday, August 22, 2019

U.S. Officially Withdraws Offer To Sell Its Patriot Missile System To Turkey

Soldiers of the Air Defence Missile Squadron 2 stand guard with Patriot missile launchers in the background in Bad Suelze, northern Germany on December 4, 2012.

CNN: US formally pulls Turkey's Patriot missile system offer

The Trump administration has formally withdrawn its offer for Turkey to purchase a Patriot missile system in retaliation for Turkey's receipt of the Russian-made S-400 missile system.

"We have consistently told Turkey that our latest offer of PATRIOT would be withdrawn if it took delivery of the S-400 system. Our PATRIOT offer has expired," a US State Department official tells CNN.

In December, the US State Department announced that it had approved the possible sale of a $3.5 billion Patriot missile system to Turkey.

The withdrawal of the Patriot missile defense system is just the latest US response to Turkey's acquisition of the S-400 system.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Turkey is committed to buying Russia's S-400 missile system. This U.S. offer was going nowhere.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The S-400 is actually a far superior system for less than the cost. So why wouldn't they?

Anonymous said...

Because they're a NATO ally. Obviously it doesn't make fiscal sense for them to buy the inferior product at a higher price, but there was an expectation that they would drink the kool-aid when they were admitted into the organization.

Also, until the US actually betrays an ally on article 5 there is a reasonable argument to be made that it's worth it to buy US-made weapons even if a few of them are a worse deal than their Russian counterpart. How much is it worth to have the global equivalent of a hockey goon on your side in case things go tits-up?

Not saying that I disagree with you but you asked why they wouldn't, and that's the argument why.