01 November 2011

A Curious Sale

According to Reuters, the US is selling three AH-1W Super Cora attack helicopters to Turkey. Nothing unusual there. Turkey routinely buys military equipment from the US and they already have several of these helicopters.

What is unusual is the fact that these three Super Cobras come from the current inventory of the Marine Corps. As the news item noted, "such sales from the U.S. military's current inventory are extremely rare."

It seems to suggest that Turkey will need these Super Cobras in the very near future. Since they already own ten of these choppers, I doubt that they need them for their almost routine incursions into northern Iraq in pursuit of PKK forces.

So the question I am not able to answer is: why is there a sense of urgency in bolstering Turkey's attack capabilities?

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