Global News

The United States has found alternate suppliers for all but a dozen components that Turkey were contracted to produce for the F-35 stealth fighter jets until Washington suspended it from the programme, Defense News quoted Pentagon officials as saying.

Washington suspended Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet programme in July after Turkey defied U.S. warnings to take delivery of S-400 missile defence systems from Russia.

The removal from the programme affected eight Turkish contractors building 937 parts for the stealth fighter. The companies are expected to each lose a minimum of 30 percent of their annual turnovers.

The Pentagon’s F-35 programme executive, who testified in U.S. Congress on Wednesday while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was meeting his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump at the White House, said that he expected Turkey to be phased out from the programme as scheduled by March 2020.

“We began just over a year ago, very quietly but deliberately, taking actions to find alternate sources for all of those parts,” Defense News quoted the program executive Lt. Gen. Eric Fick as saying in Congress. 

“We are not quite there yet, so we have, on the air frame side, 11 components we have to mitigate to be at full-rate production … and on the engines, there’s one: integrated bladed rotors, IBR’s.”

Turkish companies will continue delivering previously ordered parts after the March 2020 deadline. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord affirmed to Representative Donald Norcross, that as of Wednesday, Turkey’s exit from the programme was not expected to cause any F-35 production delays.

Washington halted the delivery of 100 F-35 fighters to Turkey due to Ankara’s decision to acquire S-400 surface to air missiles, while Turkey also risks being sanctioned under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA. 

The S-400 issue was at the centre of Erdoğan’s meetings yesterday with Trump and a group of Republican senators.

At a joint press conference with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, Erdoğan said the pair had discussed the dispute over the S-400s and F-35s and said it would still be possible for Turkey to buy Raytheon-made Patriot missile systems, which Washington had previously offered as an alternative to the S-400.

“Turkey’s acquisition of sophisticated Russian military equipment, such as the S-400, creates some very serious challenges for us, and we are talking about it constantly,” Trump said during the press conference. 

“We’ve asked our Secretary of State, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and our respective national security advisors to immediately work on resolving the S-400 issue,” he said. 

https://ahvalnews.com/us-turkey/us-close-replacing-turkey-f-35-programme-pentagon