
bring_it_on wrote:That's unlikely to happen. What is also unlikely to happen is that they get Patriot while also getting the S-400. I think this was planned as a counter offer with the ball now in Turkey's court. Hopefully better senses in Turkey should prevail and they come to the realization that they being part of NATO will hardly have a capable and usable air-defense system if they are called upon to defend NATO against its primary military adversary who just happens to be the designer of their system.This was largely seen as a political play by Erdogan following Putin planting himself in Syria and after the downing of his fighter and the shooting of his ambassador in Turkey.
It would be quite foolish for us to be having a debate to reevaluate turkey's presence in our high end defense program because of their close proximity to Russia under Erdogan, and because of them acquiring the S-400, and then to turn around and sweeten the deal by adding yet another sophisticated military system on top of that. This was quite likely an alternative floated by the Pentagon/DOS to pull Turkey away from the Russian orbit. Let's see if this works. But Putin has a good pulse of Middle East nations and can shake them down by using his Military in the region so it would be interesting to see what price in Syria Turkey perceives it would have to pay should it cancel the S-400 purchase at the 11th hour.
Perhaps adding THAAD, to the PAC 2 GEM-T, and PAC 3 MSE, might be the ticket, to nix the S-400 deal.