The US Idea the Russians Need Turkey to Figure Out How to Shoot Down a F-35 Is Beyond Silly

US halts deliveries of F-35 “equipment” to Turkey over S-400 contract. This is how F-35 soap saga is justified:

The United States and other NATO allies (fear) that own F-35s fear the radar on the Russian S-400 missile system will learn how to spot and track the jet, making it less able to evade Russian weapons in the future.

In an attempt to persuade Turkey to drop its plans to buy the S-400, the United States offered the pricier American-made Patriot anti-missile system in a discounted deal that expired at the end of March.

Turkey has shown interest in the Patriot system, but not at the expense of abandoning the S-400.

There is one problem, actually two, with this “justification”. I’ll start with a lesser one.

1. Patriot is not a peer to S-400. Nothing personal, but US air defense systems are not “quite there” despite massive propaganda campaigns extolling their combat virtues. Turkey knows this. Turks have a good idea about how its own Air Force was grounded after shooting down Russian Su-24 in November 2015, and who and what actually provided targeting to Syrian air defenses on April 13, 2018 against Trump’s “very smart missiles”. Plus, in general, Russian record in this field speaks for itself.

2. The most laughable in all that, however, is the fact that people still use this beaten to death argument about Turkey magically learning about how to shoot down allegedly super-pooper-duper invisible F-35 and then, of course, giving desperate Russians this information.

Well, I have some news for those people who still reside in this bubble–to shoot down F-35 one has to have two different bands radar, good sensor-fusion algorithms and decent signal processing protocols and voila’. S-300 PMU2 Favorit can do this, certainly S-400, and its inevitably coming iterations for which there is literally a line of customers, can.

In general, this whole BS about “stealth” should end at some point of time–it was a good propaganda while it lasted. Reality is, with modern processing power and radar design F-35 is not survivable against modern cutting edge air-defense and air-forces.

I can totally understand the irritation Washington feels about this whole situation, after all Turkey is a key NATO member with an actual army, and seeing NATO member going for such a weapon systems from Washington’s prime time arch enemy–this is a no-no. But then comes this question: so, the United States will stop (will it?) F-35 and associated technology deliveries to Turkey, then what?

Do we really want to open this can of worms? Turks are not idiots, by far–they can calculate and while Erdogan might still do rapid 180 degrees maneuver, he also can not fail to consider the fact that instead of F-35 Turkey may get her hands on, say, some decent version of Su-35. Possible? Possible! How probable? I don’t know. But Obama should have thought twice when unleashing, or pretending that he didn’t know,  a coup against Erdogan in 2016. Or, for that matter, a bloody overthrow of government in Ukraine in 2014. But current American elites have no concept of own actions having consequences.

Meanwhile India also signed $5 billion contact for S-400, also against the background of Washington’s pressure not to buy things from those pesky Russians. But behind all those maneuvers one fact remains unchanged and I was writing about this for years–Russian weapons systems are created to kill and do that very effectively. Unlike American military-industrial complex Russian military-industrial complex is not jobs program or corporate welfare system, it never was.  Allow me to quote myself:

For a nation with such a military history as Russia’s the issue of military technology is an issue of survival. As such, weapons in Russia are sacralized because behind them are generations of Russians who shed blood to make those weapons what they are.

They have become a part of the culture to such a degree that commercial considerations take a very distant second place to a main purpose of these weapons—to actually defend the nation.

This is absolutely not the case in the United States, with some exception for its Navy, with Americans having no knowledge or recollection of what real war is and what instruments forfighting and winning it are needed. Those things cannot be paid for in money, they are paid for in blood.

I guess this should help explain why Russia is so successful on the international market with her weapons. They are simply good, in fact, the best and people know that.

Source: Reminiscence of the Future