In today’s NY Times, there’s an editorial declaring that Turkey can have delivery of either the F-35 fighter or the Russian S-400 surface to air missile but not both.
One of the reasons given to justify such an either/or choice is that “Purchasing the S-400 would create an unacceptable risk because its radar system could enable the Russian military to figure out how the F-35 operates”. Now, it’s possible this is just a lot of hot air serving to distract from a more fundamental reason (such as Turkey simply can’t be in both the US’s and Russia’s camps. Period). On the other hand, it may be true and that leads to my question:
Just what does it mean that Turkey having the missile will allow the Ruskies to figure out how the F-35 does its thing? Is the implication that Turkey will fly F-35s in its airspace for the express purpose of enabling the Russians to track it with the S-400 radar system and thereby discover its vulnerabilities? Could they not do that (almost as) easily elsewhere, even without Turkey’s involvement?
I take it to mean that there’s concern either that the S-400 may report back some data to Russia automatically, kind of like the F-35’s ALIS system (less likely) or that Turkey may just hand over / sell radar data to Russia (perhaps more likely).
As for whether they could accomplish the same thing elsewhere, I doubt it. If a Turkish pilot wanted to be cooperative and interact with the S-400 for various tests, I imagine they could get much more data than an uncooperative flight of F-35s elsewhere.
It’s like the difference between snapping a quick picture of a celebrity in the airport as they’re passing through vs having the celebrity come to a photographer’s studio for a photo shoot.
I doubt concerns like this are mainly manufactured. They are probably quite real.
However I’ve sometimes wondered in various cases where at least somewhat US-friendly countries buy advanced Russian equipment about Russian concerns they will share sensitive info about the systems with the US. This is limited, besides willingness of the countries in question to be rather bad customers, by things like export versions of Russian systems being different in critical respects than the ones used by Russia itself, the general difficultly in figuring out in full how modern electronic without source code (which might not be provided to such customers) and so on. But there seems some potential for a two edged sword. In some cases FSU’s did sell examples of fairly advanced Soviet/Russian systems to the US for test after the Cold War (including components of the earlier S-300 system) and it was apparently of some value.
This is relevant to India’s purchase of the S-400, and rumored negotiation with Saudi Arabia. It seems the US objection to the purchase in India’s case is sanctions on Russians arms exports rather than a direct security concern about the S-400. And most people seem to think the sanctions will be waived in that case to avoid interfering with (non 5th generation fighter) arms sales by the US to India. The fact that the F-35 makes the situation so much more sticky again might simply be explained by the concern about radar data going to Russia, and being used to improve the S-400’s capability against that target, being justified.