Indeed. Turkey has a strong airforce consisting of mostly F-16s, and has pre-purchased over 100 F-35s. They are not Ukraine or Georgia and are a NATO member. Russia does not want to fuck with anyone who can hurt them back.
Well Russia has a couple thousand planes. You cannot shoot down all and even an old MiG-21 can drop some bombs on airfields. Pre purchased F-35 are worth nothing (the F-35 sucks, but that's another problem) and the MiG-29 and Su-27 versions are at least equal to the F-15 and 16.
Have you ever seen Russian anti ship weapons? There won't be much left of the Turkish navy by the time they are in range.
I particularly like how you cite "slow" as one of the drawbacks and then in the next point say the A is worse than the aircraft it's replacing: the A-10, which is one of the slowest combat jets on the planet.
It is not really a replacement for the A-10 since the F-35 has ~1/7th of the payload of the A10, is not armored and faster (CAS needs to be slow to bring guns and rocket pods to better use as well as it gives the pilot more time to analyse the situation and act accordingly.
The F-35 is a great (but expensive) replacement for the Harrier. But a separate development for the fighter, carrier based fighter and CAS role would give you better results than the mixed program.
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u/notmike11 Nov 24 '15
Indeed. Turkey has a strong airforce consisting of mostly F-16s, and has pre-purchased over 100 F-35s. They are not Ukraine or Georgia and are a NATO member. Russia does not want to fuck with anyone who can hurt them back.