Israel pushing US to keep F-35 upgrade secret from Turkey
Tehran (KNA) - A senior Israeli military official has disclosed that the Tel Aviv regime is engaged in talks with the United States over delivery of F-35 single-engine stealth fighter jets to Turkey without performance-enhancing software.
The unnamed official told Haaretz newspaper that Israel wants to be the only entity in the Middle East with F-35 warplanes in its inventory in order to keep its military qualitative edge.
While the Israel Air Force is scheduled to receive the software that will improve the plane's capabilities in July, Israeli military authorities are pressing their American counterparts not to provide Turkey with the software.
"Our concern is that Turkey is going through a very dramatic transition as a country. Turkey has gone a long way from being a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) ally and an important partner in working against terrorism, to the situation today, where it is holding an American citizen as a bargaining chip. This is not the behavior of an ally," US Republican Senator James Lankford told Haaretz.
"My concern is - they're a NATO ally, they have been a good partner for years, but if we don't know what the country is going to be like in a few years, we should withhold this resource from them," he commented.
Source: PressTV