The United States is poised to boot NATO ally Turkey out of the F-35 joint strike fighter program after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ignored repeated warnings from Washington that he could not have both the U.S. aircraft and Russian-made air defenses, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said.
Turkey announced the first shipment of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles arrived in Turkey today and would soon be operational.
“We made it very clear to the Turkish government that they had to choose between the S-400 system and participation in the F-35 program,” Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said Friday in an interview with the BBC. “They chose the S-400. And so they will be suspended, indeed eliminated from the F-35 program.”
The Pentagon is expected to make an announcement Friday afternoon.
“We are aware of Turkey taking delivery of the S-400. Our position regarding the F-35 has not changed,” acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters at the Pentagon.
“So there will be more to follow after that conversation,” he added.
Reed says Turkey will also face severe sanctions under the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
“The law will require the president to impose sanctions on Turkey because they purchased the S-400,” Reed said. “So the consequences are very severe.”
Reed said there is a bipartisan consensus in Congress that the Russian S-400 system is not compatible with the American F-35.
“If the Turks had the S-400 with Russian technicians, quote/unquote, they could use just training to do profile of F-35 aircraft in flight and develop information” that would compromise its classified stealth properties, Reed said.
