The Biden administration’s January approval and June contract finalization of the sale of forty new F-16 fighter jets to Turkey and the upgrade of nearly eighty of its F-16 airframes was most certainly celebrated in Ankara. After years of acrimony following Turkey’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defense system and its subsequent expulsion from the US-led F-35 program, the inking of this deal represents a turn in the right direction in the US-Turkish relationship. NATO military planners in Europe also have reason to cheer Turkey’s commitment to upgrade its fighter aircraft fleet on a large scale, even though it is not a purchase of fifth-generation F-35s.
For the Turkish Air Force, this F-16 acquisition brings familiarity and precedence that will make the integration of these aircraft nearly seamless—or at least an order of magnitude easier than onboarding an unfamiliar airframe. Turkey explored the option of acquiring Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft as a hedge against the possibility of the US F-16 deal falling through and is publicly keeping this option alive. New weapon systems bring countless changes, and not all of them are better. Pilots, technicians, and support personnel would all be starting from square one to learn a different airframe such as the Typhoon and its associated systems. Aircraft maintenance procedures and logistics processes would involve a steep learning curve. With the next generation F-16, Turkish Air Force personnel would instead be evolving and adapting their current (and deep) knowledge of the weapon system, adjusting to particularities of the newest version. For NATO, such an ease of incorporating new and upgraded F-16s into the Turkish Air Force would be helpful, making the aircraft mission ready and available for NATO planning shortly after delivery. The scale of purchase that Turkey is pursuing should also please NATO air planners at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Belgium and at NATO Air Command in Germany. With over 240 F-16s, the Turkish Air Force is already the largest NATO air arm—besides the United States—to employ the F-16. While the Turkish Air Force will likely retire some of their older jets upon obtaining the new F-16s, the rest of the fleet should remain in service for years to come.
Force offering with teeth
This is, however, about more than the number of airframes. It’s about Turkey upgrading such a large number to a high capability level, incorporating advanced active electronically scanned array radars, modern electronic warfare suites, and updated data links among other equipment. This shows that Turkey is willing to modernize its F-16 with improved capabilities to make them more lethal and survivable against modern air threats. Air forces failing to upgrade their fleets risk relegating their air arms to irrelevancy, and that is not the case with Turkey.
These F-16s are needed for NATO missions. NATO air leaders are most concerned about fighting anti-access, area denial (A2AD) campaigns at the beginning of any conflict with a near-peer adversary in an attempt to gain air superiority—and the F-35 is perfect for this role. Nonetheless, there will be plenty of other NATO missions beyond A2AD, and the Turkish F-16s will be in a prime position to conduct those missions at scale. While European air forces are forecast to have more than 600 fifth-generation F-35s on the continent by 2030, there will still be hundreds of aircraft of other generations at NATO’s disposal. As NATO air tacticians work to optimize the simultaneous integration of fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft in the same battlespace, Turkey’s upgraded F-16s will be better postured to implement that integration due to the advance avionics and sensors being included in the forty new F-16s and the nearly eighty receiving upgrades.
Just as important, if not more so, is the Turkish commitment to buy advanced weapons in large quantities for its F-16 fleet. The proposed sale includes nearly one thousand AIM-120 medium-range, radar-guided air-to-air missiles, over 400 AIM-9X short-range, infrared-guided air-to-air missiles, and a plethora of precision air-to-surface munitions to attack fixed and mobile targets. This is an important point for NATO planners, as it ensures that Turkey’s force offering comes with teeth. Some nations acquire major weapon systems (aircraft, tanks, ships), but underinvest in munitions needed to employ the weapons systems—a hollow force, effectively eroding deterrence potential. This is not the case with Turkey, whose air force will be ready from day one with a credible fleet upon completion of the contract, reinforcing NATO’s conventional air forces deterrent potential.
Beyond the equipment itself, Turkey is positioning itself to be the de facto leader of NATO F-16 users: a leadership role it should enthusiastically embrace with this new acquisition. Current and future NATO F-16 users in Europe include Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Bulgaria. Notably, the epicenter of NATO F-16 employment is shifting from northwest Europe to southeast Europe, as the nations of four of the five European Participating Air Forces (EPAF) have committed to the F-35 (Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Belgium). Portugal, the sole EPAF nation that has yet to commit to the F-35, intends to fly the F-16 for the foreseeable future while exploring a replacement aircraft.
For the next two decades, southeast Europe and the Black Sea region will be dominated by F-16 users. Romania acquired its first F-16s from Portugal, with more to come from Norway. Bulgaria’s first F-16 Block 70 should take flight this year, and Slovakia is purchasing fourteen Block 70 F-16s as well. (“Block 70” refers to new F-16s produced in Greenville, South Carolina, while the “Viper Upgrade Program” allows older F-16s to be modernized to Block 70 standards. ) And while not currently a member of NATO, Ukraine is poised to start employing the F-16 soon. Given Turkey’s long history of using the F-16, and the fact that this deal involves the same Block 70 version of F-16s that Slovakia and Bulgaria will have, the Turkish Air Force should step into this role and be a mentor among the NATO F-16 community. For example, the Turks should consider establishing an F-16 Block 70 Fighter Weapons Instructor Training course, the same way the Dutch hosted the program for the EPAF community. NATO air forces would benefit greatly from a new generation of top-tier F-16 instructors and tacticians.
Relationship renewal?
There are hurdles to overcome before all these advantages come to fruition. Lockheed Martin will need to clear its F-16 production backlog for Turkey to capitalize relatively quickly on this purchase, as will the various subcontractors and weapon producers. Nonetheless, should the United States and Turkey succeed in overcoming these challenges, this acquisition could open the way for a renewed defense-industrial relationship between the United States and Turkey at a strategic level.
It must be emphasized that Turkey’s eventual support for Sweden’s entry into the North Atlantic Alliance sealed the deal for this F-16 purchase, and it is in Ankara’s best interest to continue to make common-sense decisions like this. The continued insistence on maintaining the S-400 system in its inventory will likely ensure Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) implementation remains intact. The abandonment of the S-400 could start the process leading to a potential reentry into the F-35 program. There are other potential areas for defense industrial cooperation such as US participation in Turkish warship and submarine programs, or US subsystem co-development for some of Ankara’s ambitious organic defense production efforts.
Additionally, some skeptics argue that Turkey has no intention of using its F-16s to deter Russia, preferring to employ them in counterinsurgency operations or balance against neighbors. This argument ignores that Turkey actively participates in both the NATO Defense Planning Process and Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) regional defense planning development as part of its Alliance commitments to defend NATO airspace. Turkey’s air power contributions reinforce NATO’s overall deterrence posture, leaving Moscow no choice but to look at NATO’s defensive capabilities as a whole and not its parts.
Some analysts suggest this purchase is a wasted effort, given Turkey will acquire F-16s and not F-35s. Clearly, newer and upgraded F-16s are not F-35s. Nonetheless, this type of analysis is blind to the realities of the relationships involved. No amount of wishful thinking will bring the F-35 to Turkey immediately, as sovereign decisions by both parties are now “water under a bridge.” Even if the US Congress approved F-35s for Turkey overnight (which is not going to happen soon), the process to get a single F-35 to Turkey is many, many years away. This new F-16 acquisition fills that gap, improving bilateral relations while providing quantifiable, fielded air power for national and NATO commitments on a realistic timeline. This is good for all parties involved. In the short term, finalizing the F-16 deal reestablishes trust between Washington and Ankara, and gives a boost to NATO planners who will need to rely on Turkish forces to meet deterrence plans for the decade to come.
Andrew Bernard is a retired US Air Force Colonel and a visiting fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.
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Image: Airmen from the 39th Maintenance Squadron assemble aircraft lift air bags during a crash, damaged, or disabled aircraft recovery (CDDAR) exercise at Incirlik Air Base, Türkiye, Jan. 8, 2024. US Air Force photo by Senior Airman Renan Arredondo