Turkey to procure "clever" deadly strike fighter

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), also called the Lighting II, a new strike fighter which is being procured in different versions for the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy by consortium of nine countries, will replenish the air fleet of Turkey and some NATO-states in place of currently existing combat planes, Islamnews.ru agency reported.

Turkey, which was among countries that contributed varying amounts of research and development funding to the program, is planning to replace its F-16.

The Joint Strike Fighter Program budget requested $11 billion. The F-35 Lighting II is a single-seat aircraft with supersonic dash capability. The F-35 program develops and deploys a family of highly capable, affordable, fifth generation strike fighter aircraft to meet the operational needs of the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Allies with optimum commonality to minimize life cycle costs. The F-35 was designed from the bottom-up to be our premier surface-to-air missile killer and is uniquely equipped for this mission with cutting edge processing power, synthetic aperture radar integration techniques, and advanced target recognition.

Turkish media say that the new strike fighter is “a clever killer.”