Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

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Some GeoPolitlcal context:

* If you don't know about Erdogan, theres too much for a HN thread.

* The 1936 Montreux Convention allows Turkey to deny any country at war (not with Turkey) to deny warship passage, except to return home.

* Turkey is an incredibly important part of NATO because of their ability to choke Black Sea access.

* This has kept Russia's warm warm navy in check, particularly for the Ukraine conflict

* NATO requires Democracy and "Rule of Law" for member nations

* NATO has never had to remove a member state, and honestly nobody is sure how that'd happen

* The US leases airbases in Turkey, with nuclear penetration bombers and nuclear warheads stored on site.

* Russia has always seen this as a double standard when the US complains about Russia putting nukes in places like Belarus.

* Trump denied Turkey access to the F-35 program because they chose to install S400 systems from Russia.

* Credit due were credit due, military analysts generally agree this was a good decision, and it was at the request of bi-partisan lawmakers.

* The thought was Russia could profile F-35 fighter's radar returns somehow with S400 systems

* This is _in spite_ of Turkey committing funds to the F-35 program, which to this date, said funds have not been returned to Turkey.

"* The US leases airbases in Turkey, with nuclear penetration bombers and nuclear warheads stored on site."

My understanding is that the bombs are on site, but the bombers are not.

This from 2019 by The Federation of American Scientists supports that view.[1] "The remaining 50 bombs are for use by US jets, even though Turkey never allowed the US Air Force to permanently base fighter-squadrons at Incirlik. Jets would have to fly in during a crisis to pick up the weapons or they would have to be shipped to other locations before use. As a result, the nuclear posture at Incirlik has been more a storage site than a fighter-bomber base during the past two decades."

[1] https://fas.org/publication/nukes-out-of-turkey/

I actually didn't know that, thank you for enlightening me. I've heard of people refer to working out of that base with bomber crews, and I didn't even stop to think for a second that the planes are in fact _not_ permanently hangered there.

> military analysts generally agree this was a good decision

Lines like this always get me. It seems to somehow imply the opinion of military analysts are necessarily good for society at large, or that they're even moderately representative of the democracies they originate from.

> and it was at the request of bi-partisan lawmakers.

Likewise. What was their actual reasoning for backing this decision?

We may never know the actual reason, but we can speculate, and I'm sure reality is somewhere between the extremes.

The published story is that S400 systems would be able to repeatedly profile F-35 low-observable aircraft. Eventually a probability model could be created from all of these radar returns. Turkey claims that no data would be sent back to Russia, but that was up for debate.

I'm sure there's an element of truth to the above story, but it's not the full one. My take is Turkey does seem to make NATO nervous with Erdogan's rise to power and becoming a dictatorship. Imagine if F-35s were sold to Turkey, then Turkey left NATO. Russia and China would _love_ to examine them up close (likely in exchange for free or heavily discounted arms).

That's just speculation though. There are professional military analysts with more informed opinions than mine.

> We may never know the actual reason, but we can speculate

Democracy manifest.

> a probability model could be created from all of these radar returns

So.. we built a weapon system who's utility is immediately reduced by the amount of time it spends in proximity to enemy radar systems? Then, we tried to use that same weapon system's manufacturing base as a means to create worldwide political allies?

And now.. because the friend of our friend is maybe some sort of enemy, we have to pull the plug on this ally?

And so.. military analysts blithely "support" this. Sounds like they're providing some exceptionally shallow analysis in that very simplistic conclusion.

> There are professional military analysts with more informed opinions than mine.

No doubt. I'm sure their analysis is more designed to benefit their sector than it is to actually inform any of us.

> So.. we built a weapon system who's utility is immediately reduced by the amount of time it spends in proximity to enemy radar systems?

It's a far more complicated situation. Short answer: No. That's a naive perception of how "stealth" aircraft work.

First, it's unlikely that the F35 will ever be susceptible to a weapons grade radar lock for the frequencies in which it was designed to be low observable in. However, detecting that an F35 is present is quite useful for adversaries. These would be on non-targetable frequencies. It's in the best interest of the F35 operators to make sure that it's return signature in those frequency bands is a bit of a mystery. In fact, this is so important, that F35s are generally flown around with _intentional_ radar reflectors during all non-combat operations to keep the aircraft observable.

Second, (this is speculation I want to make that clear its my opinion) 5th generation fighters are likely "as good as it's going to get" for a long time. Within 25 years, every country will be able operate low-observable aircraft, barring some breakthroughs in quantum physics. Extending the time it takes other countries to catch up makes the investment pay out longer.

I really didn't have a good grasp on this stuff until I read up on the LRASM weapon. It's an anti-ship cruise missile fired hundreds of miles away from a moving target. During its its terminal phase, it's able to use its radar to seek its target, even if the target warship is using civilian vessels as human shields. How exactly it does this is of course classified, but military analysts (your favorite word, I know) have surmised its clandestine radar operations have been taken profiles of ships from likely enemies vs radar returns from merchant vessels. Does that comparison sort of make sense?

Seems strange to try to provide context to a story about Erdogan but mostly talk about NATO and Turkey as a nation. If you want to try to provide context, please do so, but try to keep it related to the topic at least.

“ Trump denied Turkey access to the F-35 program because they chose to install S400 systems from Russia.”

this is true but please explain as well why turkey is using S400 systems. Erdogan tried for years to get similar systems from the US and they never wanted to give it to turkey. Erdogan then rightfully bought S400 and this angered USA so much they removed turkey from F35; turkey then developed their own aircraft. lets also state that similar moves in drone technology years earlier by USA led turkey to become the world leader of modern drone warfare.

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