ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The United States may soon halt talks on the sale of its F-35 multirole fighter jets to Turkey, if the NATO member continues to pursue a Russian-made missile defense system, a senior Pentagon official has said.
“The S-400 is a computer. The F-35 is a computer. You don’t hook your computer to your adversary’s computer and that’s basically what we would be doing,” Katie Wheelbarger, the acting assistant secretary of the Department of Defense for international security affairs, told Reuters.
The Turkish Air Force is currently training at an airfield in the United States, and state-run Anadolu Agency reports the first two F-35s are set to be delivered in November.
However, Ankara's insistence on obtaining the S-400 system from Russia has US officials reconsidering the sale.
“There [are] decisions that come up constantly about things being delivered in anticipation of them eventually taking custody of the planes,” said Wheelbarger.
Turkey, a member of NATO has increasingly been under the thumb of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Everyone knows that this issue has nothing to do with neither NATO and F-35 project nor the security of the U.S.," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a meeting of Turkey Youth Foundation (TUGVA) in the southeastern Diyarbakir province on March 2.
Turkey has the second largest military army in NATO, has strained relations with Syria through that conflict, and has drawn the ire of Brussels because of its post-coup human-rights record.
“So there’s a lot of things in train that can be paused to send signals to them (that we’re serious),” Wheelbarger added, without indicating how Washington could press Ankara on the issue.
The United States prefers for Turkey to use the Patriot air defense system instead of the S-400.
“It’s prudent program planning...to ensure that you have stability in your supply chain,” she said, referring to NATO without speculating that Turkey might be dropped from the program.
US President Donald Trump in February blocked the sale of F-35s set to be delivered this month to Turkey after setting a February 15 deadline for Turkey to cancel its order of the S-400 system from Moscow.
"[W]e will not stand idly by while NATO allies purchase weapons from our adversaries… We cannot ensure the defence of the West if our allies grow dependent on the East," said US VP Mike Pence at the time.
Russian state-news TASS reported last month that Moscow will complete S-400 deliveries to Turkey by the end of this year.
"We have signed the contract and we will complete the deliveries by the end of this year. We will deliver all the systems this year," said Russian defense corporation Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov last month.
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