Of course, it is not for nothing. It is a message to the west that we use any means to acquire for what we need.
Tukiye left without a dome and s400 became a necessity. There is not any proof of s400 is useless. From pansir example you cannot say it does not work.
Worst seemed outcome of acquiring s400s is exclusion from f35 programme which is not that bad given Mr Karakuş' statements.
No country can service and modify fighter and have control of f35's logistics.
F35's can only operate with the password coming from pentagon.
Those are the worst things that Turkiye would have when you have a US as so called ally.
The ecomics of having f35 is another problem as well. Thats why Brits cancelled most of their f35 orders.
A lot of rights and a lot of wrongs as well.
1. S400 is not a bad system. It will bring down planes that are quite far away. But it is not really ours. It can not be incorporated in to our AD system. As a stand alone and export version system, it is limited in capability. Since the decision was taken to build our own indigenous AD system, buying S400 from Russians was a quandary.
2. F35 is one of the best planes around. It has ground braking technologies on board. It taught us so much that it can not be explained in words. It is a flying computer. But it is an expensive plane. Flight hour cost is high. Some of the technologies it has are still classified. Like the paint or certain parts that have to be sent back to US when taken off the plane. Turkey was to become a maintenance and repair centre for these planes. But still classified technologies regime would be in effect.
3. No! F35 is not controlled by Pentagon. They don’t need to control these planes. All they need to do is stop supplying you parts. Then the planes become junk.
During the first few planes delivered to British Airforce, there were teething problems with the ALIS system. This was the size of a small lap top that contained the flight schedule of the plane that needed to be inserted in to the cockpit with a set codes per each plane. Sometimes this code would not work and the British pilots had to contact Lockheed Martin (not pentagon) to obtain the unlocking code to fly the plane. Also the sensitive flight information that was conveyed to LM, was questioned by most international users. So the whole ALIS system was abandoned and replaced with a new more discreet and international friendly ODIN system.
4. UK were buying the most expensive version of this plane; F35B. The carrier version.
At 120+million pounds each they were very expensive. Their upkeep costs due to sea worthiness was prohibitively expensive. So instead of buying 48 planes per carrier they halved it to 24 planes per carrier. I think they put the purchase of the F35A version on the back burner for the time being.
5. Yes the F35 is an expensive plane to run. But more importantly for a country like us that is manufacturing it’s own weapons, it would have become far too expensive. Since we were not given the source codes of these planes, we would be stuck with US weapons. Or pay millions per each weapon to have our weapons integrated on to these planes like the SOM-J exercise. Then US would know the characteristics of our weapons and could easily pass it on to …….
