If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas. The fact is we had our F35s ready for delivery and the imprudence of the government cost us to loose a very strategic asset(not even counting the worsening image and economic repercussions ). Furthermore, we we're a supplier of the Joint Strike Fighter Program. We we're in the chain. We were benefitting from it greatly. Every global sale of the aircraft meant more business for us.
I don't understand how can someone compare a stealth fighter with an AD system and find the latter more of value. In reality a stealth fighter is orders of magnitude more valuable than any given AD system. SAM can only buy you some time. They cannot make up for a shitty air force. In a war, those systems are the first targets. If your adversary have a competent air force equipped with stand-off missiles, your cutting-edge AD system wouldn't even stand a chance. This is true for any AD (including SİPER). A squadron of F35s would pull apart those batteries like a hot knife through butter. Imagine ÇAKIR was in service. How fast do you think we could overwhelm S-400 with those missiles? We could do it even with the drones we already have.
It was a mistake to buy S-400 and we paid very dearly for it. I hope that we're smarter now and not make the same mistakes again. We have a very promising indigenous AD program and we don't need to pay exorbitant amounts of money to a country which is known for exaggerating their weapons' ability and for their subpar quality. This is not a trade-off worth it.
what is not given in this post is modern AESA are LPI and they are made to fade signals with background noise, it is not easy for any syste"m to do:
"X has standoff missiles bomb here bam bum badabing! Done!"
And for this, you would need hard recon to know where to attack in case of a war, LPI makes them safe against ARM's most of the time too.
+you are comparing two different things, we had to have SAM systems because of lack of them, you cant just use an aircraft to intercept every flying thing, thats just very costly and unsafe to do,
What SAMs do is "Area Denial" they make enemy high command and pilots to stay away from that zone, even if the SAM systems wont be able to shoot them down, it is still a high threat zone with multiple more aerial assets, and being observed with L and S band ground based AESA radars, you cant do this with jets, or old ass I-Hawks.
oh i am not even talking about CM and BM threats, you cant do shit to them with jets.
Now what you are trying to say is SAMs are easy targets, but in reality they are not. They are mobile, they are usually seperate, and newer ones use LPI radars adn the list goes on, without even touching their own capabilities.
Yes, stealth fighters are good, but for the current state of our southern flank, SAMs would do a better job protecting our space and denying enemy jets than F-35.
and if you want deepstrike, we can use MIUS or TISU for that until TF-X arrives.
Until TF-X arrives, a new and different tactic will be used for aerial targets, that would depend on heavy datalink and area denying by SAMs to support our aircraft, eventually forcing enemy to be more cautious and force them to divert their forces. +hitting enemy command bases, logistical centers and airbases (not just a runway but mostly command structure and weapon depots, for example Ukranian attack on Russian Crimean AB and how it destroyed a lot of aircraft and logistical capability) mostly with Stand-off weapons, SRBMs and CMs. Thats why we need Anti Radiation loitering drones, to deny enemy AD to engage these munitions, and AKBABA is a good complementary to this.
Until 2028-2032, we need to usit our F-16s with AESA radars to make them safe against EW and make them, just better. Datalink between AESA equipped MIUS' to F-16s would be a real threat for enemy aircraft, combined with data from ground radars and E-7Ts.
If Baykar can pull off AI for MIUS, we can even use some of them to destroy enemy aircraft, and even if they cant do that good AI, with good sensor suites and radar, it can hunt down enemy F-16s or let it be Iranian or Syrian jets from long range or "stealth" range (keep in mind that none of our enemies have this kind of integration, so they cannot do what i have said to detect stealth, but Rafale's IRST can be a little tricky, so Baykar has to find a way to make aircraft IR stealth). And MIUS is going to have an internal EW, which is a huge + for its capabilities.
As i said before if Baykar can pull off the AI work, it will be superb and can probably be able to best enemy aircraft in dogfights, even if they cant at the first step, being unmanned+stealth is a good stat from the start, best for deepstrike
I remember a reply from Boracetkin about how our E-7Ts were not able to detect F-35s at British airbase in Cyprus, assuming that observations were made from 150-200km from Brtish airbases, thats pretty normal. But this doesnt mean that they cant detect them near 100km or 75, and this heavily explains why we need wingmans to protect our E-7Ts, this radar thing applies to ground based radars, but keep in mind that their effectiveness depends on the ground.
Stealth is not undefeatable, nor SAMs.
but this equation all depends on what your country needs.
A war with Greece not being on the horizon, SAMs can provide better,
Was S-400 a good choice? Who knows, we dont have the stats or how they performed at tests, but i dont really like it, not the performance but other issues like buying weapons from Russia, buying a Patriot or SAMPT would have been better because of the looks and how they could have been integrated to radar network, dont know about SAMPT but Patriot is not really perfect either, so we wouldnt lose anything compared S-400, but we probably wouldnt have any F-35s now same as before, they would have find an issue like "We wont supply jets fore invasion" or "We wont supply F-35s because of our concerns over Greece" or "We wont give F-35s because of human rights" bla bla bla.
and to guys who says "We should have waited for F-35s to arrive and then buy S-400", well no
the reason is they would have cut the supply and parts flow, so we would have them grounded in months, and if we tried to reverse engineer, we would get sanctioned to shit, probably worse than Iran"
