TR Turkiye's F-35 Project and Discussions

Xenon54

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That is just small part of the larger issue. The larger issue is the extremely high price of US labour exacerbated by over-unionization and ever increasing corruption within them.....(like most ridiculous levels past what unions were originally reasonably made to protect). Its all exact same way the USSR stagnated and made huge industries noncompetitive by treating labour as the be-all end-all over other means of production (that are all networked together in heavy industry and manufacturing).

I saw personally what Pratt pays in Canada and US to workers here for doing same job as one in China (in our facility there). There is a ridiculous difference.

It originally comes from the corrupt bargain done in US auto industry since the 60s (making that industry more noncompetitive in US w.r.t world "newer" entrants over time) by same party that indulges the woke brigade now for similar reasons. This has spillover labour costs and inflation for other industries as we compete for same labour pool in the end....and is largest reason for outsourcing trends (to cheaper labour that can do the same job, its matter of moving capital and assets to them etc) as well.

Defence, energy, pharma, (anything manufacturing where labour has to compete with assets cost margins) its all affected by this phenomenon....and now these democrat boomer-woke alliance morons are saddling debt on top to preserve the rotten neomarxist neo-GOSPLAN model they have infected the US with in large parts....all to retain some reliable voter base thats in concord with the corrupt elitist politicians that benefit from it.....no matter the cost to everyone else. All now hinges on people realising this con.
Well, western world sees labor cost exploding because libing in the west is fucking expensive. Chinese dont need as high salary because they can lice reasonably wmeven with those relatively low wages.
Try that in Europe or the US.
 

Nilgiri

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Well, western world sees labor cost exploding because libing in the west is fucking expensive. Chinese dont need as high salary because they can lice reasonably wmeven with those relatively low wages.
Try that in Europe or the US.

Yes but I already factored that all in.

I've long looked at how corrupt the NLRB and LRB equivalents are in US/Can (w.r.t union weaponisation), that have destroyed large swathes of capital intensive industries in both countries (making ecosystems go into forced zero sum game having to pick X labour or Y assets rather than judge and analyse optimally to grow the pie so that supply side pie increases for net benefit of all longer term).

They have literally come to the point in some states where secret ballots (on unionisation) are banned so that maximum coercion can be applied on employees that dont want to unionise (that the left wing lackeys be it politicians, gated elitists and media never want to talk about).

All things done in these latter day Rome stages due to the corrupt deals they run with leftist-oriented political parties they pander and bribe in return for captive votes

Its a long story on just how the auto industry was made radically noncompetitive by these same set of corrupt thugs in their earlier incarnation in the cold war.

I am not anti-union (it is worker bargaining) but there cannot be insertion of fascism+corruption into something originally more democratic and reasonable (worker safety based, minimum guarantees to set references for bargaining process, no coercion). It has long gotten out of hand.

Macro-economically it put huge brake on investment and transferred it to consumption....leading to large part of the higher living costs (price levels) you speak of in the first place.

This was the long term build up (consumption > investment) in the west of setting up the cart before the horse...and living beyond means (and the debt model showing up prominently now)....and the privileged delusions this all creates in larger way that have done the most to generate the underlying upstream for every anti-west reaction many people worldwide have now downstream in more diverse ways.


The CCP in comparison has coordinated a high capital, investment and asset acquiring model in many industries. In essence its the earlier incarnation of what the West had going for it before this transfer by ego/privilege (when the rest of the world was much more noncompetitive due to legacy of colonialism and severe underdevelopment etc).

i.e CCP learning from mistakes done in both the extreme that was found in USSR/eastern bloc and the variant of it found in the US and West w.r.t overvaluing of labour value theory in their respective ways.

The CCP has topped off and further distorted this (given pegged exchange rate) by forex stash of 3 trillion USD...that again undervalues the yuan (and labour price signalling in USD) which in turn also promotes capital flow in one direction (and its retention stickiness).

The CCP problem for them is they didnt expand this model to other sectors (given tradeoffs that appear there that are not politically/bureaucratically convenient given lack of reform) like construction, services and increasingly regular commerce and innovation. Essentially creating quasi-consumption problems there at early stage that the West burdens itself with in industry/manufacturing.

But that is longer story to get into and its impact is not marked by same duration of time the US and Western one has been (since cold war).

You always get a good idea of where these problems lie in each country when you delve into the debt size + components from the govt side (which is both coercive and populist based compared to general market forces).

Anyway this ties in with the F-35 and defence establishment pricing in the US in pretty sinewy ways in the end. To tie this back into the original topic.

IMO, Turkiye made right choice to go for KAAN, but it was of course after the F-35 exclusion was made apparent. Turkiye however has its own "too much consumption over investment" problem it has manufactured for itself needlessly that will stymie strategic development options as these all require funds in the end especially for human resources of the top tier to push things in chunks of 10 years.
 

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20231228_093041.jpg


Photograph taken of Turkey's F-35 war planes while they were kept in the hangar.
The USA had requested a rental fee from Turkey for keeping the planes in the hangar.

1703756263052.png
 
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IC3M@N FX

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Turkey will never receive F-16s or F-35s, the money should be demanded back by all means.
 

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An excerpt from an interview with the CEO of Airbus

The F-35 will need to interact with FCAS at some point. But the USA has turned the F-35's software into a black box. How can the integration into FCAS succeed?


This is indeed a problem. The Europeans bought a black box with the F-35 with their eyes open. Some restrictions will only be visible during ongoing operations. That's why all F-35 purchasing nations are working feverishly to finally be able to establish some kind of communication with the jet. However, the USA has to grant approval for this, which is currently happening very slowly or not at all.


This is the simplest summary of how wrong it was for us to buy the F-35 fighter jet. We would have to beg the USA to establish a link even with our own F-16s.


@Ryder @Yasar @TR_123456 @Cabatli_TR @MADDOG @Rodeo @Sanchez @Test7 @Zafer @dBSPL
 

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An excerpt from an interview with the CEO of Airbus

The F-35 will need to interact with FCAS at some point. But the USA has turned the F-35's software into a black box. How can the integration into FCAS succeed?


This is indeed a problem. The Europeans bought a black box with the F-35 with their eyes open. Some restrictions will only be visible during ongoing operations. That's why all F-35 purchasing nations are working feverishly to finally be able to establish some kind of communication with the jet. However, the USA has to grant approval for this, which is currently happening very slowly or not at all.


This is the simplest summary of how wrong it was for us to buy the F-35 fighter jet. We would have to beg the USA to establish a link even with our own F-16s.


@Ryder @Yasar @TR_123456 @Cabatli_TR @MADDOG @Rodeo @Sanchez @Test7 @Zafer @dBSPL
F35 means American F word to its allys for 35 years, outright enslavement.
 

Sanchez

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And yet, its advantages still outweighed its disadvantages by a mile and every user keep giving more orders even if they have their own projects seperate from US as well. Can't overwrite history. Turkey didn't decide to not buy F-35. Turkey bought S-400 and thought US wouldn't dare to follow their threats with actions. But they did dare.
 

Bogeyman 

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And yet, its advantages still outweighed its disadvantages by a mile and every user keep giving more orders even if they have their own projects seperate from US as well. Can't overwrite history. Turkey didn't decide to not buy F-35. Turkey bought S-400 and thought US wouldn't dare to follow their threats with actions. But they did dare.

Gürcan Okumuş "We would have to work with Lockheed Martin in order to integrate 9 different munitions, which we integrated into our own F-16s, into F-35 warplanes. They would carry out the integration and would not deliver the source code to us."


A tuft of grass made the camel fall off the cliff. It would not be logical to fall for the honey trap and equip all HVKKs with aircraft that we cannot use properly. The threat to us would be that the most basic capabilities and operational competence would fall out of our control. Therefore, any new deliveries other than the delivery of the planes flown by our pilots would ruin us. There was no point in putting the US's leash around our own neck.



We would not have our own logistics ecosystem. Because at every step we would take in the logistics ecosystem, we would be under the control of the USA for every part. Unlike F-16s, the logistics ecosystem would be under the constant surveillance of the USA.
We would not even be able to maintain the engine without the US observation mission at the facilities.
We would not be allowed to integrate our own national air to air, air to ground munitions. We would be doomed to constantly order US ammunition for the F-35's lifetime.


The F-35 fighter jet could be a good aircraft for countries that are not politically or militarily opposed to the United States. A country that directly delivered air defense systems to PKK/YPG (they gave NASAMS, provided that it was under the control of its own soldiers). They weren't going to give us a blank check when we always had the possibility of going to war with Greece.
 

Yasar_TR

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This is the simplest summary of how wrong it was for us to buy the F-35 fighter jet. We would have to beg the USA to establish a link even with our own F-16s.
I am afraid I don’t fully agree with you about the above statement.
It is always wrong to buy ANY military equipment from a foreign source.
But as a country with no military industry foundation, we have been buying planes , ships tanks from the west since the end of Second World War. In fact we have been given/donated free planes, ships and tanks galore.
As the proverbial statement go: Instead of learning to fish we were given cooked fish to eat.
Henice we have always been reliant on the West and USA for all matters related to defence.

Had we have taken delivery of the F35 planes and been using them, we would have been praising them now.
It is only after we were kicked out of the F35 program and started to develop our own plane and defence equipment and when embargoes started to bite, did we learn the real value of indigenisation.

In a way the adverse behaviour of the West and USA has triggered a positive flow of indigenisation wave all along our entire defence industry. It has awakened us as a nation.

As a staunch supporter of indigenisation I still believe that F35 is a good plane to buy ; in fact probably the best plane to buy especially if you don’t have an industry that can produce a fighter plane.
For Turkey it helped us to learn a great deal and fired the first shots of our own fighter aircraft production adventure.
Today if they were selling them, I would still buy a couple of squadrons of F35s to keep our foot in. They are still the plane everyone looks up to and tries to beat. And as it is continuously being developed, we would be in the loop.
 
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Sanchez

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Gürcan Okumuş "We would have to work with Lockheed Martin in order to integrate 9 different munitions, which we integrated into our own F-16s, into F-35 warplanes. They would carry out the integration and would not deliver the source code to us."
Yet multiple products we had at the time were to be integrated to F-35 like HGK, KGK, LGK, and SOM-J.
We would not even be able to maintain the engine without the US observation mission at the facilities.
TEI is 46% owned by US. There is literally an American on the board of directors. When we make TF35000 and Kaan, it will still be with the blessing of US.
It would not be logical to fall for the honey trap and equip all HVKKs with aircraft that we cannot use properly.
This was never the plan, HvKK never projected to have a single fighter fleet. F-35 would always be coupled with TF-X.
We would not have our own logistics ecosystem. Because at every step we would take in the logistics ecosystem, we would be under the control of the USA for every part.
Turkey was to be a literal hub for F-35 logistics for all users in this part of the world. We still are part of the American ecosystem. Our tankers are currently being modernized in the US, the spares we shore up for F-16s come from AMARG in US unless you think we are fishing for parts in Venezuelan F-16As.
They weren't going to give us a blank check when we always had the possibility of going to war with Greece.
This is not the first time we got close to war with Greece. It's at least the third time in the last 50 years. After 1974, they gave us Phantoms, after 90s, they gave us LANTIRN, tanker aircraft and AWACS.

Not being able to have a single F-35 squadron is a huge disadvantage to Turkey and will stay as such for decades to come. And again, we didn't decide to not buy F-35s, this is hearsay at best. We were booted from the program as US didn't want us to receive the F-35s we helped build and paid for.
 

Bogeyman 

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I am afraid I don’t fully agree with you about the above statement.
It is always wrong to buy ANY military equipment from a foreign source.
But as a country with no military industry foundation, we have been buying planes , ships tanks from the west since the end of Second World War. In fact we have been given/donated free planes, ships and tanks galore.
As the proverbial statement go: Instead of learning to fish we were given cooked fish to eat.
Henice we have always been reliant on the West and USA for all matters related to defence.

Had we have taken delivery of the F35 planes and been using them, we would have been praising them now.
It is only after we were kicked out of the F35 program and started to develop our own plane and defence equipment and when embargoes started to bite, did we learn the real value of indigenisation.

In a way the adverse behaviour of the West and USA has triggered a positive flow of indigenisation wave all along our entire defence industry. It has awakened us as a nation.

As a staunch supporter of indigenisation I still believe that F35 is a good plane to buy in fact probably the best plane to buy especially if you don’t have an industry that can produce a fighter plane.
For Turkey it helped us to learn a great deal and fired the first shots of our own fighter aircraft production adventure.
Today if they were selling them, I would still buy a couple of squadrons of F35s to keep our foot in. They are still the plane everyone looks up to and tries to beat. And as it is continuously being developed, we would be in the loop.
If you read carefully above, I opposed the purchase of additional planes other than the planes flown by our pilots.

If Turkey had purchased around 100 aircraft without any obstruction from the USA, neither the HVKK nor the SSB would have been able to find a way to fly these aircraft in case we were subjected to covert embargoes.

The most positive scenario for us would be to receive the planes flown by our pilots before the embargoes started. But yet here we are.
 

Bogeyman 

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Yet multiple products we had at the time were to be integrated to F-35 like HGK, KGK, LGK, and SOM-J.
They promised us integration. However, the final say still belonged to them. If these promises were tied to political conditions, we would be back where we started.


TEI is 46% owned by US. There is literally an American on the board of directors. When we make TF35000 and Kaan, it will still be with the blessing of US.
It is true that the USA has a large say in the Turkish defense industry. But right now we are in the middle of a swamp. And if we want to stand on our own feet, moving into the deeper part of the swamp is not the right direction for us. Platform-level purchases that will increase the balance in the dependency relationship in favor of the USA will blunt our independence.

Importing engines allows us to keep our dependency at the component/part level. Would it be easier to nationalize your own platform or an imported platform? We would have more options on MMU, right?

Turkey was to be a literal hub for F-35 logistics for all users in this part of the world. We still are part of the American ecosystem. Our tankers are currently being modernized in the US, the spares we shore up for F-16s come from AMARG in US unless you think we are fishing for parts in Venezuelan F-16As.
Just because we produce parts for F-35s does not mean that we can use them as we wish. Even integrating the part we produced into our own engine required a delegation from the USA to oversee maintenance operations. Such a requirement was not put forward for the F-16, right?

I actually answered the remaining questions in my previous answer in terms of determining the direction and action in the defense strategy.
 

Saithan

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let's not return to past topic that we have talked about. doesn't change a thing. F-35 in our hands would have been a political tool just as well. since we don't have it we don't have any chips.

Lets just focus on our own jets and see them fly ffs.

I get sick of seeing people going back to spilled milk
 

Zafer

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We are in a deep conflict of interests with the US, this part should be clear. So no deal would move forward in any case.
 
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Bogeyman 

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The most important lesson to be learned from the F-35s is that we must stop platform purchases that will take us backwards in our dependency relationship with the countries in question. Keeping imports at the component/piece level will make our job easier when we want to nationalize them in the future. Digging our own hole with our own hands and reverting the dependency relationship back to the old one for the next 50 years will only bring about our end.

If the Turkish defense industry management had not encountered embargoes, they would never have initiated a nationalization campaign and those 100 aircraft would have entered our inventory. I would rather Kaan be less talented than make the air force a lame duck with 100 planes we can't fly.
 

uçuyorum

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The most important lesson to be learned from the F-35s is that we must stop platform purchases that will take us backwards in our dependency relationship with the countries in question. Keeping imports at the component/piece level will make our job easier when we want to nationalize them in the future. Digging our own hole with our own hands and reverting the dependency relationship back to the old one for the next 50 years will only bring about our end.

If the Turkish defense industry management had not encountered embargoes, they would never have initiated a nationalization campaign and those 100 aircraft would have entered our inventory. I would rather Kaan be less talented than make the air force a lame duck with 100 planes we can't fly.
Here we see the difference between Navy and Air Force. Navy invested heavily on indigenous platforms and subcontractors and even suffered things like Balyoz for it but they kept planning long term detailed and focused on independence and their own technical officers. Now all they needed was money and they were underfunded for years, seems they are now getting everything they want almost. Air force on the other hand focused solely on american platforms for a long time and depended on them and as a result now we can't buy anything, fighter, awacs, cargo and tanker even? We can't buy f16, eurofighter, f35 is long gone...
 

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I just want to point out one thing (but i am not an expert).

Saying that the F-35 is very good because other countries want to buy it and setting new orders, does not seem logical to me.
Those countries are all allies of the USA (and most of them are NATO members).
So the F-35 is the only 5th gen option on the market for those countries. And i do not think that there will be another 5th gen option coming from the USA other than upgraded F-35 versions. And we are speaking about countries, which high rank politicians and intelligence services were getting spied on by USA (you can look up NSA spying scandal), with no consequences for USA.

But maybe some members here can enlighten me.
 

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