Turkey to Drop Plans For F-16s: Chinese J-10C Fighters Hinted as Choice to Modernise Fleet

[Edevelop]

A member of the Turkish Presidency’s Security and Foreign Policies Council, Cagri Erhan, has announced that the country is expected to drop its requests to acquire F-16C/D fourth generation fighter aircraft from the United States. He cited the fighter’s “$20 billion cost package,” and the availability of more cost effective options in particular the Chinese J-10C. “Now we have other options like the Chinese jet, which was sold to Pakistan, Russian jets and also Eurofighter jet.” Pakistan began receiving J-10C fighters from China in February 2022 - a fighter from the same weight range as the F-16 but with a design several decades newer and multiple important performance advantages particularly in regards to its armaments and flight performance. Like the F-16 Block 70/72, the J-10C is a single engine lightweight fighter with a low operational cost and enhanced fifth generation level avionics. The Chinese aircraft has the benefit of comparable and in most respects superior capabilities, as well as lower maintenance needs and a much faster delivery time. Turkey, however, is the largest foreign operator of the F-16 with approximately 250 in service, meaning new F-16s would be much easier to integrate with existing logistics and training regimes and would be compatible with existing air launched weapons it already fields. China has in the past modified its fighters to be able to operate American weapons at the request of foreign clients - most notably third generation J-7 fighters sold to Pakistan which can used American AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Turkey is itself looking to phase out American air to air weapons from its F-16 fleet by developing indigenous alternatives, the Peregrin and Merlin, which could provide a means of standardising the weaponry on both J-10 and F-16 units. Neither of these missiles, however, nor those available for even the latest F-16s, match the performances of the PL-10 and PL-15 air to air missiles used by the Chinese aircraft. The J-10C’s arsenal of cruise missiles also optimise it for anti shipping, air defence suppression and strike roles with many of these weapons having no analogues in the F-16’s armaments suite. A further key benefit of the J-10C is that it can be acquired at a small fraction of the cost of the F-16, in part because it is being produced on a much larger scale. While China has acquired over 200 J-10Cs for its own fleet since 2018, the United States has not purchased F-16s for 18 years since 2005 meaning the aircraft is being manufactured as a lower end product for export. The discrepancy in the statuses of the two programs is reflected in the fact that the J-10 design has received considerably more far reaching upgrades and investments to improve its performance over the past two decades than the F-16 has.

Military Watch Magazine

militarywatchmagazine.com

 

[Dalit]

That would be something truly special. PAF and TAF flying the J-10C.

 

[LegionnairE]

Who writes this nonsense

an idea even more prepostrous than the Type 23 frigate acqusition coming from a fucking nobody in a soon to be replaced government.

 

[xbat]

bull chit

 

[jhungary]

Well, will China want to sell J-10 to a NATO member?

Will Turkey willing to leave NATO for the J-10?

This is as likely as I hit the lotto tomorrow, when there are no lotto draw....

 

[Foinikas]

Who writes this nonsense

an idea even more prepostrous than the Type 23 frigate acqusition coming from a fucking nobody in a soon to be replaced government.

Yeah but Akar used to say such things. He would go out and say "we have more options,we might buy Eurofighters" and then Turkish media would talk about visits to Britain etc.

I also read the reveal of TFX was postponed,they said it was out of respect to the earthquake victims and not technical or whatever.

 

[renhai]

Welcome Turkey friends back to the real world. lol.

 

[renhai]

Well, will China want to sell J-10 to a NATO member?

Will Turkey willing to leave NATO for the J-10?

This is as likely as I hit the lotto tomorrow, when there are no lotto draw....

lol. The classic tactics of the Turks. Pretend to purchase Chinese weapons to put pressure on the West.

Classic case: HQ-9

Now it's J-10C.

Turks will tell the West: Hey. If you don't sell me weapons. I will buy Chinese weapons.

 

[dBSPL]

Personally, the J-10C is a combatant platform that I like very much. But I don't think the Turkiye-China rapprochement will be in the form of a direct purchase of military systems, but that doesn't mean that what is being talked about is completely out of the question. We all know what happened when the US stalled the Patriot system procurement for more than a decade. In the meantime, TR has launched its own air defense development programs and has already put the first two echelons of these into active service, while on the other hand, it has procured the S400 system as a stop-gap, and before that, it had already agreed with China for the T-Loramids tender.

We need another 10 years or so to get rid of the critical dependence on US logistics in the future planning of the Turkish air force. All resources are being channeled into domestic projects. I am not just talking about the main flying platform, but a transformation from a stand-alone NATO-independent combat tactical networks, to positioning systems, from air control-command systems, to perhaps hundreds of subsystems related to the operation of the aircraft.

The problem is that this 10-year period is also a time when regional and global risks are at their highest level. So in a sense, TR was caught on one leg.

It had to put out these fleets without being able to replace its aging F-4 aircraft. It was excluded from the F-35 project. The US has sensitively blocked or postponed all aircraft purchase possibilities.

If TAF insists on its current indigenization policy, a bright future awaits it in aviation. However, until it reaches that point, it is surrounded by conditions that cannot compromise its deterrence. This is an important dilemma.

What matters most is TR's national interests. If its allies block the procurement of these systems, TR will inevitably turn to alternatives. In fact, the main dynamic behind the indigenization movement in TR is the implicit or explicit attitude of these so-called allies at the scale of the embargo. I'm not just talking about combatant aviation. For example, there are billion-dollar programs that were completed in 2015-2017 but could not be mass-produced due to so called allied obstructions or ambargoes, and then the project was reworked almost from scratch.

Look, the technical difficulties are what is really worth discussing. And we have written hundreds of things about it here, a whole new logistics planning, training documentation and dozens of related issues. All these points cumulatively multiply the cost of purchasing non-NATO aircraft.

However, Turkiye has been investing heavily in NATO-independent operational capability and related systems for a long time, and most of its R&D spending has been on these issues. TR is already planning to reach a technical capability within NATO as close to the French type as possible, and as independent of the US, by the 2030s.

In other words, if the US continues to undermine and ignore TR's national interests while at the same time blocking TR's military system needs, TR may choose to act the hard way. This is already the point TR aims to reach, and if the US pushes, this transformation will start 10 years earlier.

 

[dBSPL]

Btw, While Turkiye was the 7th largest arms buyer from the US before 2016, it dropped to 28th in 2018-22. And from the last year, it has coming to complete standstill. In the same period, Turkiye became the 12th largest arms exporter and its total arms imports decreased by 49 percent. And the 2023 growth expectation for defense-related exports is over 40%.

For the US, turning military cooperation and arms procurement into political blackmail was a highly effective tool in a unipolar world order. But the world is changing, and while the world is changing, the US state continues to melt politically in the hands of the dinosaurs and continues to consume its decades of gainings. From South asia to Asia Minor, from the Arabian peninsula to the africa, the US is losing all its traditional allies one by one. If anyone tells you that the United States has always been right but has been betrayed by them, know that this collapse is their doing.

If I were a US citizen, I would be ashamed to see this:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1635136733141512196

 

[sutton999]

The possibility is there.
Saw plenty of attack towards Turkey leadership from Anglo media.
French jet is too expensive; Russia jet I bet is out of question.
J10c providing a path to J35, while tf-x takes time.

 

[Bilal Khan (Quwa)]

tbh, I think Turkiye will procure the Eurofighter Typhoon. Doing so would give the British government more urgency to release technology and IP for the MMU as there's a multi-billion-dollar fighter deal on the line. The T3 is also a good strike-capable platform.

 

[kuge]

Will turkey give up east turkestan?

 

[STREANH]

Yes, NATO member is going to buy Chinese jets. Very credible news.

 

[Deino]

A member of the Turkish Presidency’s Security and Foreign Policies Council, Cagri Erhan, has announced that the country is expected to drop its requests to acquire F-16C/D fourth generation fighter aircraft from the United States. He cited the fighter’s “$20 billion cost package,” and the availability of more cost effective options in particular the Chinese J-10C. “Now we have other options like the Chinese jet, which was sold to Pakistan, Russian jets and also Eurofighter jet.” Pakistan began receiving J-10C fighters from China in February 2022 - a fighter from the same weight range as the F-16 but with a design several decades newer and multiple important performance advantages particularly in regards to its armaments and flight performance. Like the F-16 Block 70/72, the J-10C is a single engine lightweight fighter with a low operational cost and enhanced fifth generation level avionics. The Chinese aircraft has the benefit of comparable and in most respects superior capabilities, as well as lower maintenance needs and a much faster delivery time. Turkey, however, is the largest foreign operator of the F-16 with approximately 250 in service, meaning new F-16s would be much easier to integrate with existing logistics and training regimes and would be compatible with existing air launched weapons it already fields. China has in the past modified its fighters to be able to operate American weapons at the request of foreign clients - most notably third generation J-7 fighters sold to Pakistan which can used American AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Turkey is itself looking to phase out American air to air weapons from its F-16 fleet by developing indigenous alternatives, the Peregrin and Merlin, which could provide a means of standardising the weaponry on both J-10 and F-16 units. Neither of these missiles, however, nor those available for even the latest F-16s, match the performances of the PL-10 and PL-15 air to air missiles used by the Chinese aircraft. The J-10C’s arsenal of cruise missiles also optimise it for anti shipping, air defence suppression and strike roles with many of these weapons having no analogues in the F-16’s armaments suite. A further key benefit of the J-10C is that it can be acquired at a small fraction of the cost of the F-16, in part because it is being produced on a much larger scale. While China has acquired over 200 J-10Cs for its own fleet since 2018, the United States has not purchased F-16s for 18 years since 2005 meaning the aircraft is being manufactured as a lower end product for export. The discrepancy in the statuses of the two programs is reflected in the fact that the J-10 design has received considerably more far reaching upgrades and investments to improve its performance over the past two decades than the F-16 has.

Military Watch Magazine

militarywatchmagazine.com

Really? militarywatchmagazine is an almost as bad "source" like Minnie Chan and the SCMP.