China ‘in talks to buy’ air defense system from Russia

Cengizhan Çatal ANKARA / Hürriyet

Russia’s S-300 air defense system was one of the bidders for the Turkish deal.

China, which is in talks with Turkey to sell its air defense missile, is holding negotiations with Russia to purchase a similar system that was rejected by Turkey.

Russia and China are negotiating the possible delivery of Russian air defense missile systems S-400 to China, Alexander Fomin, director of the Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said last week.

A downgraded version of the systems that China is looking to buy from Russia, the S-300, was ruled out as Turkey’s first long-range anti-missile system alternative last year.

In October, Turkey had said it had decided to begin talks with the China Precision Machinery Export-Import Corp (CPMIEC) company for the joint production of the systems and its missiles in Turkey.

The S-300 marketed by Russia’s Rosoboronexport were among the systems that were beat out of the $4-billion competition, along with a U.S.

partnership of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and the Italian-French consortium Eurosam in the tender.

Turkey’s defense procurement bureaucracy has been reassessing the commercial and political aspects of negotiations with the Chinese winner of the bid after snags emerged during contract negotiations with the firm, including projected costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars due to the necessity of integrating the system into the Turkish air defense system.

NATO has strictly objected to the integration of the systems, saying it would not be possible to integrate the Chinese-built system with the NATO and American systems due to cyber security threats.