Turkey’s Fleet Needs
Turkey has been in the market for its growing navy to acquire fighter planes that can land on an aircraft carrier. Unfortunately, the Turkish navy does not yet have a carrier in its fleet but is instead using somewhat lighter assault ships than can be converted to small aircraft carriers. The hangup is that the Turkish government decided to buy the Russian S-400 system. That ended the deal on F-35s.
https://news.yahoo.com/why-turkey-may-never-f-050000932.html
From the article: Turkey was a major industrial participant in F-35 production. Turkish firms manufactured an array of components for the single-engine plane. The country’s air force planned to acquire 100 F-35s and, by mid-2019, had already sent aircrew and maintainers to the United States for training.
But the U.S. government in mid-July 2019 canceled Turkey’s participation in the fighter program. The S-400 system, in theory, could gather sensitive data on the F-35’s radar signature. If Russia acquired the data, it could modify its own air defenses to better counter the F-35’s stealth qualities. – article
That is a deal-breaker for buying US-made equipment. It does explain several recent events.
Does Turkey need aircraft carriers? It’s already take delivery of the Anadalou from Spain.
This should be interesting.
Category: NATO
So, Turkey wants aircraft for small carriers.
Fine, go to the boneyards collect up all the old Harriers, and sell them to Turkey.
Now there’s a plan RGR 4-78. This just my coupla pennies worth. I don’t think we should EVER sell ANY of our FIRST Line weaponry to ANYONE. “Specially to someone of a sketchy nature. We damn sure should have NEVER had a joint manufacturing agreement with a Country whose loyalties are slim. Turkey an ally? To me, more like a parasite that charged us a bloody fortune for bases and access. Correct me if I’m wrong.
At best, it has always been a deal with (one of the lesser) devil.
Where is Turkey trying to project force? Into the Black Sea? Why would Russia cooperate with other acquisitions? Into the Med? Where exactly in the Med and for what purpose? I can’t make heads or tails of their need for any sort of aircraft carrier. Egypt has some small carriers, but they have defense concerns along both the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts, so that makes some sense, but I can’t figure out what Turkey is going for.
I’m speculating, but I think they’re going for a retro grab of land that used to be the Ottoman Turk Empire.
Well, that makes a certain amount of sense, but it leads to other questions such as “where would they be looking to do so that would be outside the range of land based aircraft?” Every nation that I know if that has some ship that we can fairly call an “aircraft carrier” has identifiable national security concerns that are beyond the range of their land based aircraft (leaving aside refueling). I can’t figure out what those might be for Turkey.
I think they’re trying to up their game and become more of a regional player. With an aircraft carrier, they’d have some serious force projection in the Black Sea as well as be able to throw some weight around the Med.
Why in the mudda-fuckin’ WORLD would we even think of trusting a country as sketchy as Turkey in the first place? My guess is that they hired the right lobbyists from the finest whorehouses in DC to bribr the right idiot politicians along with plenty of bribes (*OOPS*, contributions) to outfits like The Clinton Crime Syndicate (*OOPS*, Foundation).
I wouldn’t get too up in arms.
If the quality of their sailors is anywhere near what I remember seeing at Great Mistakes back in the day, we don’t have much to worry about.
All of the water Turkey cares about is reachable by their land-based air. What the the hell do they need a carrier for?
As cozy as Turkey and Russia have been of late, don’t be surprised if there isn’t some quid-pro-quo going on there as well.
Turks want carrier and naval air capabilities, Russia wants a warm-water port. Win-win for them, at least.
Why?
Because you can’t call yourself a “great power” without a Navy that can fight sea battles. And that means “capital ships”.
Never underestimate Pride as as reason for stupid mistakes.
And…
What is Istanbul
Was Constantinople
…
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That’s no body’s doing but the Turks….
A silly song, but it actually explains a lot.