A followup to Professor Jacobson’s Turkey Roundup:
Hot Air reports:
According to Turkish press, as quoted by Ynet, the Turkish air force will be fitting its F-16 fighter jets with new IFF systems, which will not treat the signal from an Israeli IFF transponder as friendly, and will thus facilitate more efficient attack. The F-16’s original IFF system is made to US/NATO specifications, and identifies an Israeli IFF response as friendly. This creates an inconvenient requirement to override the system’s restrictions preventing engagement of friendly aircraft, in order to fire on an Israeli plane. (A serious inconvenience when both the shooter and the target are traveling at 500 knots or more.)
Perhaps Congress should consider legislation to prevent the export of spare parts or the execution of maintenance agreements on products that have been reprogrammed for use against U.S. allies.
I’m not sure what the correct reaction is to this particular event, although it is becoming increasingly clear that the United States should seek alternative arrangements, where possible, for those matters in which we currently depend on Turkey. While it may be slightly premature to write off Turkey entirely, contingency plans must be made to lessen the damage that would come from the sudden severing of military ties, and procedures must be in place to rapidly expel them from NATO if it comes to that.
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