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Turkey’s military and procurement officials are mulling a stopgap, off-the-shelf solution after they scrapped a multibillion dollar air defense contract and decided to build it indigenously.

Officials said the military top brass is especially keen for the stopgap solution, citing increasing conventional military threats, especially after Turkey became the first NATO member state to shoot down a Russian military airplane and spark a row.

Turkey’s relations with Russia turned sour, with Russia threatening to punish Turkey “not only by economic sanctions” after Turkish F-16 fighters Nov. 24 shot down a Russian Su-24 after the jet briefly violated the Turkish airspace along Turkey’s Syrian border.

“Turkey now faces multiple conventional threats including from a military heavyweight like Russia and from unreliable states like Iran and Syria,” said one senior military officer. “We do not have the luxury not to have a powerful, long-range air defense architecture. We cannot forever rely on NATO assets inside and outside Turkey.”

In September 2013, Turkey selected China Precision Machinery Import Export Corp. (CPMIEC) to build the country’s first long-range air and anti-missile defense system. The Chinese company offered a $3.44 billion solution.

The firm defeated a US partnership of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, offering the Patriot air defense system; Russia’s Rosoboronexport, marketing the S-300; and Italian-French consortium Eurosam, maker of the Aster 30.

Under strong pressure from NATO allies who said that a Chinese system could not be made interoperable with NATO assets on Turkish soil, Turkey opened parallel talks with the US and European contenders.

The Ankara government Nov. 13 scrapped the competition and tasked two local companies to build an indigenous system instead.

Military electronics specialist Aselsan, Turkey’s biggest defense company, and missile maker Roketsan, both state-controlled, will develop the system. But there are concerns the work may take too long.

“We share the military’s concerns that our requirement may be too urgent to wait for the indigenous system in the making,” said one procurement official familiar with the program. “We may have to buy two systems off the shelf.” The original program was for the acquisition of four systems.

So, the competition is not over although it may have shrunk by half.

“The natural contenders in the new race will be the same US and European groups,” said one industry source. “Delivery timetables will be crucial since Turkey consider this as an urgent buy.”

The US consortium commits to deliver the Patriot system within 40 months and the European group commits to deliver the SAMP/T (Aster 30) system in 18 months.

“The delivery timetable for the SAMP/T does not look realistic,” said the procurement official. “A more realistic timetable for that system could instead be 30 months.”

After consultations with government officials the military top brass will press for an urgent stopgap solution.

“We will explain to the political leadership in great detail why we must have some [long-range] systems before any indigenous system emerges,” said the military official.

An adviser to the Turkish administration agrees: “I firmly believe that our leaders will agree with the military’s assessment — at times like this.”

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Naval Today said:

Russian Navy’s destroyer ship Smetlivy fired warning shots at a Turkish fishing vessel in the Aegean Sea on December 13.

The Russian Ministry of Defence said the destroyer was forced to open warning fire in order to avoid a collision between the two vessels. At the moment of the incident, the destroyer was sailing 22 km off Lemnos Island, an island located in Greek waters.

According to the report of the Russian Ministry of Defence, the ship’s watchmen detected the Turkish vessel at a distance of 1 000 metres approaching the anchored guard ship Smetlivy from the starboard in the morning of December 13.

“Despite multiple efforts of the Smetlivy to establish a contact with the Turkish fishing vessel, its crew did not respond to radio and semaphore signals as well as signal rockets. After the distance between the Turkish vessel the Russian guard ship reached 600 metres, the naval small arms were used at the distance of guaranteed survivability of the target in order to prevent the collision of the ships“, said the report

Immediately after that, the Turkish vessel changed the heading and continued movement at a distance of 540 metres without contacting the Russian crew.

In addition to this, the Russian Ministry said the Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov invited the military attaché at the Turkish embassy in Russia to talk about the incident in the Aegean Sea. During the talks, the Russian Defence Minister said the Turkish side acted recklessly and that by only “good fortune” a more serious accident was avoided.

The Turkish attache, Rear Admiral Ahmet Gunes, promised to bring the representation to attention of Ankara immediately, said the Russian Ministry of Defence.

This event is expected to intensify the already heightened tensions between the two countries which were caused by another incident in November 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet.

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