¿U.S. to sell Patriot missile systems to Turkey?

The Ankara office director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, told Arab News he believes the decision from the U.S. State Department to dangle the offer of the Patriot system is aimed to make Turkey drop the purchase of the S-400: If Ankara forges ahead with purchasing the Russian alternative, the Patriot offer would allow the U.S. to dismiss Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program.

The Patriot and S-400 are competing systems, and Washington has firmly opposed to Turkey’s planned acquisition of Russian-made systems that are designed to target American-made military weapons. In words of Nicholas Danforth, a senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Project, “The real breakthrough would only be if Turkey abandoned its plans to buy the S-400s. For the Patriot sale to move forward, Turkish officials must have to convince Washington they are not going to buy the S-400s.”

US State Department Backs Patriot Missile Sale

On December 18, the U.S. State Department announced its proposal to Congress for a $3.5 billion Patriot system sale to Turkey.

The DSCA press release reports that Turkey plans to procure 80 Patriot MIM-104E GEM (Guidance Enhanced Missiles) and 60 PAC-3 MSE (Missile Segment Enhancement) missiles.

The package also includes four AN/MPQ-65 Radar Sets, as well as other launching stations and control systems. According to an unnamed State Department spokesperson, the sale will allow “the Turkish military to guard against hostile aggression and shield NATO allies.”

This announcement follows several years of increasing tensions between the United States and Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan.

38 North: NK in deep

North Korea is not a hermit kingdom, but rather a country that has been in the throes of change, good and bad, for over a decade.

Those changes have important implications for the Korean peninsula, the East Asian region and the international community. Too often analysis of the North is permeated by inexperience, littered with inaccurate information or grounded in poorly deducted reasoning.

38 North covers not only North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, but digs beneath the surface of political, economic, social and other developments. 38 North is a program of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS (USKI), managed by Joel S. Wit, former U.S. State Department official and current USKI Visiting Scholar, and Jenny Town, USKI Assistant Director.