F-35
Michael Peck, National Interest: Could One of America's Allies Take Down the F-35 Program?
What does America need to save its troubled F-35 stealth fighter?
Turkey, that’s what.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan recently warned that the multinational F-35 program, of which Turkey is a member, would fail if Turkey were excluded. Turkey is facing sanctions, including being dropped from the F-35 program if it goes ahead with purchasing Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, which has raised Washington’s fears that F-35 secrets might be leaked to Russia. The U.S. has stopped shipping equipment to Turkey for that nation’s planned purchase of 100 F-35s, while the first two aircraft officially delivered to Turkey are still in the United States.
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WNU Editor: Turkey .... when given the choice by the U.S. and NATO .... made the decision that Russia's S-400 anti-missile/aircraft platform is more important to their national security needs than the F-35. And while I can understand Turkey's position that they should be the ones to decide on what military systems they should buy, being in an alliance means making group decisions over an individual one. As for the decision to ban Turkey from buying the F-35 fighter jet .... it is going to cause production delays and it will increase the overall jet's cost. But this is all temporary. Alternative suppliers will be found, and the production of the fighter jet will recover. The big loser will be Turkey. Manufacturers do not want to invest and build a plant in a country or engage with a country's manufacturers that may face future restrictions and bans. Bottom line. Turkey is going to regret this decision years from now.
4 comments:
Much like the hysteria over Y2K being vastly overblown, the fears of supply disruption are too.
Why? Same reason. Preparation. Y2K in the computer field was an issue in the 1980's wherever I worked. When a program was changed for any reason, it was made Y2K compliant starting in the 1980's. There was also a movement to new supplier of Y2K compliant software written by large software companies and a turning away from in house developed code. With the F-35 program, this day of Turkish moving away from NATO, was known for at least 3 years, back in the Obama days. The F-35 program office has been preparing for it and has already identified alternative suppliers.
Kicking Turkey out of the F-35 won't cause significant or costly problems to the program.
Is there any significance in respect to weapons that have been manufactured based on metric versus imperial sizes? For example, if you were Turkey and had all of your weaponry supplied by the USA and for whatever reason in a war, delivery of munitions/parts from the USA was disrupted would that create a problem?
no
I'm more concerned about Turkey leaning towards Russia. Turkey has the largest standing army in the EU and had always been an important check against Russian aggression. If they go towards Russia, that's a large win for Russia and risks upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East. Syria and Iraq would not be able to withstand that pressure.
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