Defense One:
Today’s radar systems and aircraft need to share a lot of information. That’s a problem when the countries that produce them aren’t on the same side.
U.S. military officials have repeatedly warned that Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft system could compromise the F-35 fighter jet. But they haven’t gone into great detail about how.
In June, for example, Gen. Tod Wolters, who leads U.S. European Command, offered this explanation: “You cannot operate an F-35 in the vicinity of an S-400. They won’t talk to each other, and what the two systems will attempt to do, certainly the S-400 against the F-35, is attempt to exploit the F-35’s capabilities. I can tell you that we aren’t interested in sharing the F-35’s capabilities from a radar perspective, from an operational perspective, with the Russians. We’ve made that very, very clear.”
Yet Israeli F-35s have operated near Russian S-400s deployed to Syria.
The S-400 radars will be able to observe the F-35 “in all its flight profiles, thus being able to identify weak spots in stealth capability,” according to David Stupples, a professor of electronic and radio systems at City, University London and a member of the board of the Association of Old Crows, an association for radar and electronic warfare professionals.
