Archived material Access restricted Article
Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Tue 08/13/2019 View Mon 08/12/2019 View Sun 08/11/2019 View Sat 08/10/2019 View Fri 08/09/2019 View Thu 08/08/2019 View Wed 08/07/2019
1
2019-08-13 The Grand Turk
The Real Cost of Ejecting Turkey From the F-35 Program
Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.
Posted by 3dc 2019-08-13 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ]  Top
 File under: Sublime Porte 

#1 what a thumbsucker of an analysis

the truth is Turkey doesn't really need the F-35 or the S-400 as no major power threatens them militarily

the principal threats to Turkey are

- Erdogan himself,
- ISIS, al Q, the PKK, maybe a few others

The F-35 doesn't protect against any of these

if and when Iran gets nukes and can strap them to a missile, that would be a threat also but even then the F-35 doesn't help and neither does the S-400

Posted by lord garth 2019-08-13 00:12||   2019-08-13 00:12|| Front Page Top

#2 The analysis seems to miss the point that Turkey the Ottoman Empire wants Cyprus, Crete and -all- of the Eastern Mediterranean. From Cyprus/Crete SAM's and semi-stealthy F-35s would have made this ambition easier. Erdogan, like Adolph, got greedy.
Posted by magpie 2019-08-13 01:59||   2019-08-13 01:59|| Front Page Top

#3 So sell them F35s at inflated rates and have Lockheed introduce extra sensitivity in the fly-by-wire system. Add in the hypoxia inducing oxygen delivery.

Roll your eyes and ♪whistle when they crash them all over Ankara.
Posted by Dron66046 2019-08-13 03:01||   2019-08-13 03:01|| Front Page Top

#4 "allow allies to buy weapons that are not manufactured by the United States."

You know, I used to ridicule leftists for saying shit like the US government is run for the benefit of weapons dealers. But fuck, you could not be clearer here. How dare they lose their sales! The US government is taking actions to directly benefit them.
Posted by Herb McCoy  2019-08-13 04:49||   2019-08-13 04:49|| Front Page Top

#5 Ref #4: US government is run for the benefit of weapons dealers.

Could a nation involved a continual state of foreign conflict since the Korean War be offered as evidence, or is that purely coincidental? Perhaps an examination of just the previous eighteen years would provide a more contemporary sampling.
Posted by Besoeker 2019-08-13 05:13||   2019-08-13 05:13|| Front Page Top

#6 And what if, for once, the USA is taking the long view and is implementing a pragmatic policy -- one that is determined to outlast Erdogan? Recall, his loss of Ankara and Istamboul in the recent election shows that his Party's base is diminishing. What if the USA were following a policy to weaken Erdogan both politically and economically but one that does not break entirely with the Turkish polity, and thus the Turkish people?
Posted by Chereting Pelosi1889 2019-08-13 07:22||   2019-08-13 07:22|| Front Page Top

#7 The Berlin Blockade prompted the reestablishment of a peacetime draft and the commitment to being a world policeman that was fundamentally fatal to the old Constitution and the rise of a permanent 'Deep State'. The previous 'war' experiences were marked by demobilization and return to the antebellum economic-political-social relationships when the emergency was over. Its not like small frequent local military operations were unusual, just ask the natives on the frontier. However, that was done by a small volunteer force often starved of resources. Their most vexing international problem was the attitude of the Mexican government in allowing sanctuary to the 'opfor' to operate out from (things don't change a lot).
Posted by Procopius2k 2019-08-13 07:28||   2019-08-13 07:28|| Front Page Top

#8 Turkey under Hippy has not acted as an ally. Severe simply quit pretending
Posted by Frank g 2019-08-13 09:33||   2019-08-13 09:33|| Front Page Top

#9 Yippy, can autocorrect
Posted by Frank g 2019-08-13 09:34||   2019-08-13 09:34|| Front Page Top

#10 Whatever, the real problem is letting the islamic dicktatter having them.
Posted by Woodrow 2019-08-13 09:41||   2019-08-13 09:41|| Front Page Top

#11 Who says that China or Egypt want the F-35?
Posted by BernardZ 2019-08-13 09:44||   2019-08-13 09:44|| Front Page Top

#12 The loss of trust between the United States and Turkey is real and will be hard to soon reestablish in any substantive form.

As if I wasn't laughing hard enough yet, reading this article.

Jah sure lost that lucrative Patriot AAM contract drawn up with China. 8,000 units if I remember right, built in our hidden factory outside Caracas. Its where all that sweet Venezuelan electricity is going towards.
Posted by swksvolFF 2019-08-13 10:58||   2019-08-13 10:58|| Front Page Top

#13 What if the USA were following a policy to weaken Erdogan both politically and economically but one that does not break entirely with the Turkish polity, and thus the Turkish people?

If Turkey is to return to secular style of Ataturk, the secularists are going to have to outbreed the religious citizens. Or we can wait a generation until the Kurds have become the majority.
Posted by trailing wife 2019-08-13 11:36||   2019-08-13 11:36|| Front Page Top

#14 Re: #5 & #7: Could a nation involved a continual state of foreign conflict since the Korean War be offered as evidence, or is that purely coincidental?
I read The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third by Edward N. Luttwak. There are parallels in the Late Roman Republic to our current actions. The Republican Romans exercised "preemptive paranoid self-defense" by mobilizing farmer soldiers, marching out to trample someone, and then demobilizing back to their homes. As Rome became more powerful they just found themselves more and more things to be paranoid about and the citizen soldiers had to be replaced by full-time professionals to "police the territories".
TL/DR: If you have a hammer you will develop an itch to go out and look for nails to bash...
Posted by magpie 2019-08-13 12:52||   2019-08-13 12:52|| Front Page Top

23:56 ruprecht
23:56 gorb
23:45 Varmint Splat1454
23:35 gorb
23:26 Alaska Paul
23:23 gorb
23:20 Dron66046
22:25 European Conservative
21:21 Dron66046
21:12 Dron66046
21:01 charger
20:47 jpal
20:46 trailing wife
20:25 jpal
19:54 Silentbrick
19:46 Phaick Uneretle6310
19:36 jpal
18:29 Seeking Cure For Ignorance
16:47 Woodrow
16:26 Lex
16:02 Dron66046
15:51 Seeking Cure For Ignorance
15:30 chris
15:17 The peanut gallery









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com