If Turkey goes on with the purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system, U.S. should respond “forget buying the F-35”, Tom Rogan of Washington Examiner wrote.

The NATO member Turkey is expected to buy military equipment that can work seamlessly with other NATO equipment, but the purchase of the Russian system “represents a betrayal of NATO’s founding mission: to deter and defeat any Russian attack on Europe or the United States.” Rogan claimed.

The F-35 fighter jets, developed by the U.S. company Lockheed Martin in cooperation with a number of countries including Turkey, cannot be delivered after the S-400 system is activated in the country, because it was designed to overcome adverse defence systems such as the Russian’s, Rogan explained.

Were Turkey to possess both the S-400 and the F-35, it could simply fly the F-35 around and figure out how best to target it with the S-400. At that point, in light of Erdogan’s increasing submissiveness to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the U.S. would face very real concerns of Turkey handing over its targeting data to Russia. That risk would pose an intolerable danger to our aircrews and to the NATO mission of effective warfighting.

Erdogan has two choices, Rogan concludes, he can either have the Russian S-400s or the NATO’s F-35s, but cannot have both.

Erdogan, however, repeated Turkey’s determination for buying the Russian system.

In a speech at his hometown, Rize, Erdogan criticised NATO for to recent crisis and said: “We purchased the S-400. The deal is done”

Source: ahvalnews.com