Russia’s Top Air Defence System Compromised? Moscow Asserts Turkey Can’t Legally Resell S-400s to Other NATO Members

<p >Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has asserted that Turkey cannot legally resell its <a href=" target="_blank" >Russian-supplied</a> S-400 air defence systems to third parties, citing an end user certificate which is part of the arms supply contract. "The arms contracts contain the end-user certificate paragraph," he recalled. "In order to do something else with the products that are delivered under such a certificate, which mentions the country that has received these weapons as the end user, the consent of the country that sold these weapons is needed,” the minister stated. The statement comes amid reports that Turkey has come close to <a href=" target="_blank">reaching a deal </a>with the United States under which it would retire its S-400s in exchange for a return to the F-35 fifth generation fighter program. Turkey was formally evicted from the fighter program in July 2019, after receiving its first components from its S-400 system that month, and has since struggled to modernise its fleet, with the NATO member unable to realistically consider non-Western alternatives. </p><p ><img src=" title="F-35 Built For the Turkish Air Force Before its Eviction From the Program"></p><p >Western sources have previously widely called for Turkey to transfer its S-400s to Ukraine, where Russian built S-300 systems are widely being used. Neighbouring Greece has transferred its own relatively modern S-300PMU-1 systems to the country, which was reportedly part of an agreement which allowed it to begin acquiring F-35s. It appears more likely, however, that S-400s could be transferred to the United States or another NATO member to allow alliance members to study the systems. A possible loophole in the arms supply contract would be for the systems to be transferred to American control but remain on Turkish territory – possibly at the U.S.-controlled sector of Incirlik Air Base where shared nuclear weapons are stored. Russia relies very heavily on the S-400 and other ground based air defences to compensate for the small size of its fighter fleet relative to NATO’s and its lack of a large fifth generation fighter fleet to counter NATO’s fleet of F-35s. A compromising of the system to the country’s Western adversaries could thus have highly detrimental implications for Russian security. </p><p ><img src=" title="Ex-Egyptian Air Force MiG-23MS in the United States "></p><p >Russia notably has a history of seeing its major weapons systems compromised by third parties delivering them to the Western world for study, with Turkey’s neighbour Egypt having <a href=" target="_blank">done among the most damage</a> Soviet weaponry in this regard during the Cold War. In the 1970s Egypt illegally transferred MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighters and 2K12 KuB air defence systems to the United States for study, which while initially denied, was later confirmed by the death of U.S. Air Force General Robert Bond while piloting a MiG-23 in April 1984. The intelligence provided allowed U.S.-aligned Israel to very effectively jam Syrian 2K12 KuB systems and MiG-21 and MiG-23 fighters during the Bekka Valley air war in 1982, winning an overwhelming victory. The danger to Russia from the compromising of the S-400 is significantly greater, however, as while the USSR had not provided Egypt with its most capable air defence systems or fighters, and was quickly developing new generations of both kinds of assets such as the BuK-M1, MiG-23ML and MiG-29, the S-400 remains Russia’s foremost air defence system and is expected to form the backbone of its air defence network for well over a decade to come. </p>