Special to WorldTribune.com

ANKARA — Turkey, frustrated over delays, has been examining an
alternative to the U.S.-origin Joint Strike Fighter.

Officials and defense industry sources said the Turkish Air Force and
the government’s Defense Industry Undersecretariat have begun to consider an
interim solution to JSF, a $1 trillion program plagued by production and
development delays as well as numerous flaws.

The officials said Turkey could not wait much longer for prime contractor Lockheed Martin to correct the technical flaws and determine a fixed price for the F-35 fighter-jet.

“We had expected that by this point there would have been a major order of JSF, with deliveries to begin around 2016 at the latest,” an official said. “Instead, we see so many difficulties in terms of technical and other delays that we have to begin seriously looking at alternatives.”

Turkey, with an investment of some $250 million, has been a Level 3
partner in JSF. Over the last two years, L-M facilitated the award of
nearly $5 billion in co-production contracts to Turkish defense companies,
mainly the state-owned Turkish Aerospace Industries.

But officials said both the Air Force as well as the Defense Industry
Undersecretariat, known by its Turkish acronym SSM, could not proceed with
an order of 100 F-35s. They said Turkey did not want to be the only NATO
member to procure JSF amid persistent structural and subsystem flaws that in
February 2013 led to the grounding of the U.S. Air Force fleet. Israel, in a
deal financed by Washington, has been the only foreign client of JSF.

In January 2013, SSM said it was delaying its initial order of two F-35s
amid rising costs and technical failure. The SSM statement said the
performance of JSF did not reach Turkish expectations.

Officials said several Western contractors have offered interim
solutions to JSF. They cited a campaign by the Eurofighter consortium, an
offer that included co-production and technology transfer to Turkey.

But the Air Force has dismissed Eurofighter because it would require the
development of major infrastructure.

Instead, the most likely interim option was to order the F-16 Block 52+, also manufactured by Lockheed Martin.
Turkey operates one of the largest F-16 fleets outside of the United States.

“If things get worse we can consider an F-16 buy,” an SSM official told
the Turkish daily Hurriyet.

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