Decision to Exclude Turkey from F-35 JSF Program

While the discussions between Turkey and the USA on the S-400 air defense systems and the F-35, which Turkey plans to purchase from Russia, continue, the S-400 parts started to be transported to Ankara/Mürted Air Base by Russian transport planes as of 12 July 2019, President Donald Trump made the statement that "We cannot accept the co-operation of F-35s and S-400 systems in Turkey."

Five days after the missile systems were transferred to Turkey, it was announced at a press conference held on 17 July 2019 by the US Department of Defense Pentagon that Turkey would be removed from the F-35 JSF program. Pentagon Procurement Vice President Ellen Lord stated that they will fill the gap that will arise after the decision to remove Turkey from the F-35 program, with other F-35 member countries and companies producing in these countries. The Pentagon spokesperson said that Turkey produces around 900 parts in total, that these parts will no longer be purchased from Turkish companies, and that Turkish pilots who have received F-35 flight training in the USA should also leave the USA by the end of July 2019. They left the. Turkey's attempts to stay in the program did not yield results, and the 8 partner countries of the F-35 JSF program other than Turkey (USA, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and England) had a new program on September 23, 2021 that excluded Turkey from the program. Turkey was officially removed from the F-35 JSF program with the establishment of an organizational structure.

This is probably the first time in the history of the Republic that Turkey is faced with an insulting event such as being excluded from a program with which it is a partner with its allied countries. Even if the F-35 Program partner countries want to re-admit Turkey to the F-35 program in the future for political, financial or other reasons, Turkey should never return to the F-35 program again. At this point, the F-35 JSF program has been completely closed for Turkey. From now on, it should be known and accepted by the Turkish authorities that Turkey's path to return to the F-35 program is completely closed, and our Air Force should take into account that the F-35 aircraft will not be in its inventory when planning its combat aircraft needs. Negotiations are continuing between the representatives of the two countries for the return of the 1.4 billion dollars paid for the F-35 program until the date of Turkey's removal from the program.

Within the scope of the studies on the F-35 aircraft, I had come to a conclusion that the F-35 AIRCRAFT WAS BORN WITH A PROBLEM. While reaching this decision, of course, he relied on concrete reasons; I have analyzed and evaluated the issue in terms of both the political tensions between Turkey and the USA, the manufacturing country of the aircraft, and the performance of the aircraft.

Let's look at the issue from a political perspective first: It is known that there were many political crises between the USA and Turkey in the past. We can summarize these political crises under the titles as follows:

Crises Between Turkey and the USA in Past Years:
* 1960 Incirlik Departure U-2 Spy Plane Crisis.
* 1962 Jupiter Missiles Crisis.
* The 1964 US President Lyndon B. Johnson Letter Crisis.
* 1974 Poppy Cultivation Crisis.
* 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation Crisis.
* 1974 US Arms Embargo Crisis.
* 1975 Crisis of Turkey's Closing 21 Bases/Facilities to US Use.
* 1975 US Support for the Armenian ASALA Terrorist Organization Crisis.
* 1984 Crisis of US Support to the PKK Terrorist Organization.
* 1991 First Gulf War and Hammer Power Crisis.
* 1992 Crisis of the shooting of our TCG Auxiliary Destroyer and the martyrdom of 5 of our sailors
* 2003 The Crisis of Rejection of the 1 March Iraq Mandatory.
* 2003 Second Gulf War and Occupation of Iraq, Northern Iraq and PKK Support Crisis.
* 2003 Sulaymaniyah Incident and Crisis of Putting Sacks on Our Soldiers.
* 2011 Syrian Civil War and US Support Crisis of PKK/KCK, PYD/YPG.
* 2013 Turkey's FD-2000 Air Defense System Supply Crisis from China.
* 2016 15 July Coup Attempt and FETO/PDY Crisis.
* 2016 Reverend Andrew Craig Brunson Arrest Crisis.
* 2017 US Embassy/Consulate Staff Arrest Crisis.
* 2017 Halkbank Deputy General Manager Hakan Atilla Arrest Crisis.
* 2017 Visa Crisis for Turkish Citizens.
* 2017 Russian S-400 Regional Air and Missile Defense System Supply Crisis.
*2019 Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan Letter Crisis.
* 2020 President Trump's T.R. The Crisis of the Letter Sent to the President in a Disrespectful Tone
* 2021 President Joe Biden's Armenian Genocide Recognition Crisis
* Crisis of 2021 President Joe Biden's Failure to Invite Turkey to the Democracy Summit

Political tensions with the USA, which have reached the crisis, constitute the political pillar of my above-mentioned view, "F-35 AIRCRAFT WAS BORN WITH A PROBLEM". I can list my observations about the PROBLEM PERFORMANCE OF THE AIRCRAFT as follows.

1. The F-35 aircraft was born with problems, the US Combat Air Force Commander General Herbert Carlisle, who used this aircraft in the highest number, and the US Naval Forces Command Admiral Jonathan Greenert indirectly explained the moment with the statements they gave in the April 25, 2013 issue of TIME magazine. In their statements, American commanders stated the two most important problems of the F-35 aircraft. The first of the problems was that the F-35 was a short radius aircraft. The second problem that the American commanders stated was that with the developing technology of electronic sensors, the Stealth feature of the F-35s would gradually lose its value. In addition, the Chinese and Russians announced in their statements that they were tracking the US's Stealth-capable F-22 and F-35 aircraft on their radars. The Chinese also exhibited their new technology radar, which works with VHF frequency, which they follow Stealth aircraft, at the Zhuhai aviation fair near Hong Kong in 2016 and said that they can sell these radars to countries that want them. In the same year, the Chinese announced that they tracked the flights of F-22 Stealth planes stationed at the South Korean base of the US Air Force with these radars.

2. Although Australia and Canada are F-35 JSF partner countries, they were reluctant towards the F-35. A few years ago, an Australian Air Pilot Major General sent a letter to the Australian Parliament expressing his major grievances about the F-35. The aviator general, who had piloted and commanded F-18 Hornet fighter planes for many years, said in a letter addressed to the members of the Australian Parliament one by one: "Gentlemen, before it's too late, I beg you to save Australia from the F-35 planes." The English sentence is: "Gentlemen, I beg of you to drop this F-35 program before it's too late". In other words, the Australian Air General expressed his wish for his Air Force to get rid of the F-35 with the word "Beg-I beg you" to the members of parliament. Canadian Air Force, on the other hand, did not want to buy F-35 planes instead of the F-18A/B Hornet fighter planes that it would take out of service, even though its country had a large share in the joint production, and the F-18E/B Hornets, a top model of the F-18A/B Hornets It has decided to procure F Super Hornet aircraft. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in his speech in the Canadian Parliament in June 2016, used the sentence that the F-35 aircraft did not work and will not work in the future. The English sentence is: "The F-35, the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau asserted to the parliament this week, is an aircraft that does not work and is far from working".

3. The problematic birth of the F-35 is evident from the phase it has gone through since it came off the first production line. Now let's do some calculations. The first F-35A rolled off the production line in February 2006 and made its maiden flight in December 2006. After the long-term ground and flight tests of the prototype models were completed, the first production model started to be delivered to the flight units in February 2011, that is, 5 years after its first flight. When we look at the schedule of the plane's departure from the production line, test flights and delivery to the troops, it is immediately striking how long the time periods are. If the F-35 had not been born as a problematic aircraft, would there have been a long period of 5 years between delivery to the troops since it made its first flight? The aircraft, which started to be delivered to the flight units in 2011, has completed the 10th anniversary of its flight in the units today. However, the US authorities themselves stated in written documents that the problems with the F-35 have not been resolved yet. Dissatisfaction and complaints about the F-35 aircraft are also documented in official figures prepared by the US Department of Defense GAO (Government Accountability Office), the official government agency of the USA. The official report of GAO, which is the equivalent of our TCA in the US government, contains the following information about the F-35s, dated April 25, 2019: “The performance of F-35 aircraft lags behind operational needs. The aircraft cannot perform many tasks or fly as it should”.

4. Out of a total of 13 5th generation Stealth aircraft currently flying around the world and at the concept stage, only F-35 aircraft are single-engine, and the remaining 12 Stealth aircraft are all twin-engine. US F-117 Nighthawk, US F-22 Raptor, Russian SU-57, Russian Mig LMFS, China J-20 Chengdu, China J-31 Shinshin, Swedish FS-2020 (Concept), South Korea ADD C103 (Concept), India HAL/AMCA (Concept) Turkish MMU/TF-X (Concept), French/German/Spanish FCAS (Concept) British/Swedish/Italian TEMPEST (Concept), all are twin-engined. No matter what anyone says, the Americans made a strategic manufacturing mistake by making the F-35 aircraft, which they manufactured as stealth to the 5th generation radar, with a single engine instead of a twin engine. Due to the nature of the single-engine Stealth aircraft, the F-35 aircraft has a short radius of operation, carries a low ammunition load in the internal gun bay, has a low flight MACH speed, acceleration and climb angle compared to other twin-engine Stealth models, and a large turning radius, fat fuselage. emerged as a mad airplane. Apart from these performance weaknesses of the F-35 we mentioned, it should be underlined that the aircraft will be 100% dependent on the USA with all its logistics support and everything. F-35 user countries will experience a BBG (Someone Watching Us) situation with the computers on the aircraft and the ALIS (Autonomic Logistics Information System) system. That is, when an F-35 aircraft takes off for a mission in a user country, the route of the aircraft, including the weapon and fuel loads information on the aircraft, which destination it went to, which square it landed on, the faults in the aircraft's systems at that moment are recorded at the headquarters of the manufacturer in the USA. 

To summarize the low performance features of the F-35s:
* The radius of operation of the aircraft is shorter compared to other 5th generation twin-engine aircraft.
* The weapon loads it carries are less compared to other twin-engine Stealth aircraft.
* Its speed, turning radius, G drawn, acceleration and climb speed are low.

SUPERIOR PERFORMANCE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE F-35 AIRCRAFT: In addition to the low performance features listed above, F-35 aircraft also have superior performance features. It was desired that the F-35 aircraft, with its Network Centric Warfare and Advanced Sensors (NCW), be a strategic platform, not just a fighter aircraft. Its AESA (Active ElectronicallyScannedArray) radar is also the most perfect radar that can be thought of in a fighter plane today. Pratt & Whitney F135, the turbofan engine of the F-35 aircraft, has a special design that includes an integrated "Stealth" capability, very different from a standard turbofan engine. This engine minimizes its traces in the microwave segment of the electromagnetic spectrum used by radars. In addition, the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine has the ability to reduce electro-optical infrared (infrared) visible light segments. In addition to these state-of-the-art radar, engine and NCW features, it is also a fact that the flight performance desired in a combat aircraft is lower than that of other twin-engine 5th generation (Stealth) aircraft, due to the fact that F-35 aircraft are manufactured with a single engine.

Now the following question comes to mind. If the F-35 aircraft manufactured with the Stealth feature is such a low performance and problematic aircraft compared to other Stealth model aircraft in the world, how come the F-35 co-manufacturer countries in the world and the countries that later participated in the F-35 program wanted to buy this aircraft? The answer to this question is very simple. Because the only purpose of the countries that were included in the F-35 program at the beginning was to have a stealth aircraft with low visibility to the radar. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, in the 1st Iraq Operation (Desert Storm) launched on January 11, 1991, the US Air Force's Stealth-capable F-117 aircraft, although Baghdad and its vicinity were protected by intense missile and anti-aircraft defenses, the Euphrates and 39 of 43 bridges over the Tigris and Tigris rivers, and other targets in the region, including the presidential palace and command and control centers, without the loss of a single aircraft. The USA did not sell the F-117 Nighthawk Stealth aircraft and the F-22 Raptor Stealth aircraft they produced later to any country, including its closest ally England. When it decided to manufacture and sell the F-35 aircraft jointly with other countries, countries including Turkey, which are allies of the USA and who wanted to have a Stealth aircraft, were immediately included in the program.

In the press and aviation circles, the question of how our Air Forces can perform combat flight missions in the short and medium term is asked and different ideas are put forward if Turkey is removed from the F-35 program. I believe that our Air Force will find ways to perform combat missions even without F-35 aircraft, until the date when the National Combat Aircraft MMU/TF-Xs will take their place in our flight fleets. According to the information on open sources and websites, we still have more than 200 aircraft in our inventory, from Block 30 and Block 50 model F-16s, apart from the first models Block 30s. Most of these aircraft have been modernized / renewed / developed. It is evaluated by experts that these aircraft will be able to serve for 8-10 years from 2028-29, when our MMU aircraft are planned to take their place in the fleets. In addition to our F-16 aircraft, we also have Armed HÜRKUŞ-C and Armed HÜRJET aircraft, which can be used in combat missions in certain environments and conditions, and armed unmanned aerial vehicles (SİHA) produced by TAI, Vestel and Baykar companies.

CONCLUSION:

I believe that a great favor has been done to Turkey, perhaps unintentionally, by the decision of the USA and F-35 partner countries to remove Turkey from the F-35 JSF program, effective September 23, 2021, through a joint arrangement. Thus, Turkey gets rid of the problematic F-35 aircraft from the beginning. U.S. removing Turkey from F-35 program With his decision, not only did our Air Force recover a generation from an aircraft with a short radius of operation and low performance, a problem and 100% dependent on the USA; At the same time, it paved the way for the future success of our domestic aircraft industry and its subsidiaries. Now, Turkey must concentrate all its power and means to build our own National Combat Aircraft, by putting forth its best. TAI, where our National Combat Aircraft MMU will be manufactured, will have excellent facilities; It is an organization that has proven that it can manufacture MMU aircraft at world scale with its trained, experienced, talented engineers and manpower. TAI, which was established on May 15, 1984, has been a joint venture of F-16 fighter jets, CN-235 light transport aircraft, SF-260D and KT-1 trainers, Cougar AS-532 general purpose, search/rescue helicopter, ATAK A129 armed helicopters. It has gained great experience in aircraft and helicopter manufacturing by producing. Organizations such as Alp Aviation, ASELSAN, AYESAŞ, HAVELSAN, Kale Aerospace, MIKES, ROKETSAN and TUBITAK-SAGE, which are producing some selected parts of the F-35 aircraft together with TAI in Turkey, have great experience in the production of parts for the F-35 and a 5th generation aircraft. they have won. These companies will certainly be able to use their experience in the manufacture of MMU aircraft. Now, it is believed that together with TAI, these related organizations and other organizations will produce the MMU aircraft with a much more perfect performance than the F-35 aircraft by putting all their resources, manpower and experience, and thus will make the Turkish people feel great pride.

MMU is not only a project of TUSAŞ, TAI and our Air Force, but also of TURKEY. MMU is the liberation war of the Turkish aircraft industry. This war of liberation will either be won or won! It is a civic duty to give all kinds of support to win this war.