Some Joint Strike Fighter program members may be able to negotiate their own country-specific arrangements with Lockheed Martin with the U.S. government’s blessing. It seems very unlikely that either the Maryland-headquartered defense contractor or U.S. authorities would be willing to extend the same privileges to Turkey, at least in the near term.
Relations between Washington and Ankara have steadily cooled since 2014 in light of the U.S. military’s increasing
in Iraq and Syria in the fight against ISIS. Turkish authorities see the Kurdish People's Protection Units in Syria, also known by the acronym YPG, in particular as indistinct from the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, in Turkey.
Both the United States and Turkey have designated the PKK as a terrorist group. However, the U.S. government vehemently disagrees that the YPG and PKK are inseparably linked and that the former has plans to seize Turkish territory. The YPG form the core of
, the main U.S.-backed force in Syria, which has been instrumental in routing ISIS.
Ties between the two countries only deteriorated more in 2016, when Air Force officers
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
.
and his political allies promptly launched a massive crackdown, arresting tens of thousands of people, and accused the United States of sheltering the man they allege to have been behind the putsch,
. It's worth noting that the U.S. military still keeps a stockpile of approximately 50
at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, which has increasingly become
.
But the series of events also led to warming ties between Turkey and Russia, though. In July 2017, Erdoğan confirmed his country would buy the Russian
, prompting statements of concern both from the United States and the country’s other NATO allies.
With regards to the F-35, there is a distinct concern that Kremlin may be able to exploit the deal, which will reportedly involve some level of technical cooperation with Turkey’s defense industry, to see how its anti-aircraft system fares against the fifth generation fighter. Russia could then use that information to refine and expand its existing anti-stealth research and development work. There have been similar concerns about plans to add the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to the Joint Strike Fighter program.
“We’re going to have to start looking at, if they are going to go through with this [S-400 purchase], how we can be interoperable in the future,” Heidi Grant, Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for International Affairs,
in November 2017. “But right now, I can tell you our policies do not allow us to be interoperable with that system.”
“It’s a significant concern, not only to the United States, because we need to protect this high end technology, fifth-generation technology … [but for] all of our partners and allies that have already purchased the F-35,” she added. Turkish officials
they have no plans to back out of the deal, unlike in 2015 when they
to buy Chinese FD-2000 air defense systems in the face of pressure from the United States and NATO.
There had already been some calls to block sales of the F-35 to Turkey in 2017 following a incident outside the Turkish embassy in Washington, in which Erdoğan’s personal security detail
peacefully protesting, triggering a brawl and
and
.
In July 2017, David Cicilline, a Democrat Representative from Rhode Island and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
in the Fiscal Year 2018 defense budget that would have halted the sale of Joint Strike Fighters to Turkey. This did not make it into the final version of the law.
Limiting Turkey’s access to the F-35 program may not be an easy prospect in the future, either, as a result of efforts to incentivize partners to join in the first place. Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) is responsible for the construction of portions of
and
the aircraft’s Pratt and Whitney F135 engine for other NATO operators in the future. In total, 10 different Turkish firms have
to the project.
Any restrictions of Turkish involvement in the program could therefore negatively affect both the construction of jets now and the ability for NATO allies to sustain their own F-35 fleets. At the same time, Turkey has been pursuing an indigenous fifth generation fighter jet,
, in cooperation
in the United Kingdom.
As such, the Turkish government could conceivably threaten to back out of the Joint Strike Fighter program entirely, and focus on the TFX instead. Of course, this would significantly delay when Turkey’s Air Force would get its first fifth generation fighter jets, given
development cycles for such aircraft. At present, TAI doesn’t expect to have a flyable prototype
and the quality and capabilities of that aircraft are still very much up in the air. It is doubtful that it will feature as advanced a capability set as the F-35 offers.
It would also squander significant existing Turkish investment in the program, including plans to buy at least 100 F-35As. There are also reports that the country’s military
in purchasing a number of short and vertical take-off and landing capable B models. Lockheed Martin says Turkish defense contractors could expect to see a windfall of
from supporting the Joint Strike Fighter project, as well.
Though 2017, the U.S. military’s main F-35 Joint Program Office said it
to change its cooperation with Turkey, though they did say there were
at play. With the S-400 deal moving ahead and Turkey now pushing for greater control over how the jets will interact with its other information networks, there may be a greater impetus to study the implications of Turkish policies on the rest of the Joint Strike Fighter program.
How the situation plays out could be an important test case for how the F-35 project manages increasing concerns from partner nations about the heavily intertwined nature of both its computer networks and its physical industrial base.
