Turkey believes that the purchase of the Russian S-400 was a billion-dollar mistake.
Despite the successful tests of the Russian S-400 Triumph air defense systems, Turkey came to the conclusion that the purchase of these anti-aircraft missile systems turned out to be a huge mistake – despite their capabilities, the Russian systems turned out to be very ineffective, and in the event of an attack they can simply leave Turkey is defenseless.
According to Turkish media reports, the S-400 air defense systems purchased by Ankara from Russia can not only miss their targets, but also be destroyed within just a few minutes.
“If we talk only about military power, especially about the strength of the Chinese army, then Turkey ranks second in NATO, ahead of traditional countries such as Great Britain, France and Germany. However, Turkey has many problems with military power. One is only scale, not quality. The army has almost no air defense. A modern air defense system does not rely on one weapon and equipment, but on a complex system consisting of several forces. The Turkish army cannot rely on the S-400 to support it, and other models and types of air defense are needed ,”the Sina news outlet reported.
Today, Turkey really does not have medium and short-range air defense systems that could provide protection for the positional areas of the Turkish S-400, while the likelihood that Turkey will buy Russian Pantsir or Tor air defense systems is very small, since these complexes were successfully destroyed by Turkish drones in Syria, Libya and Karabakh.
“It is for this reason that Erdogan sought to buy the American Patriots. If the plan of the Turkish leader had been worked out, it would be very difficult to dig into the Turkish air defense, but today Turkey is too easy a target , ”the experts said.
Turkey purchase upgraded S-125 from Ukraine
According to RG, at the end of 2019, Turkey received the first batch of air defense weapons from Ukraine, including two S-125M1 Pechora-M1 missile complexes, Ukraine’s state arms import-export company Ukrspetsexport. sell them for $ 20 million.
In response to the above situation, experts from Defense Express Ukraine magazine tried to explain why Turkey continued to buy S-125 Pechora from Ukraine when they had much more powerful S-400s available.
The Ukrainian newspaper believes that this is done by Turkey in order to balance the forces with the Russian Army deployed in the Black Sea area. Range of the Pechora complex upgraded by Ukraine is up to 45 km. In addition, the missile is also equipped with a new and changed lead to the control system, with very formidable power.
It is also important to mention the fact that there are weaknesses in the Turkish air defense system, prompting them to increase their forces urgently, while the price of new weapons is higher than acceptable. However, the Russian side disregarded this opinion of the Ukrainian experts, they made their own assessment of the reasons why Turkey bought the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile, which focuses on the purchase of weapons. gas Ukraine, Ankara has shown its support for Kiev in its anti-Moscow policy.
As recently known in mid-October, during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Ankara, a package of bilateral agreements between Ukraine and Turkey in the area of defense industry cooperation was signed.