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Russia Doesn’t Want to Mess With Turkey’s F-4E Terminator 2020, Punches Above Its Weight

The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a hilariously outdated jet fighter in 2023. There's a reason to suspect nothing of substance, value, or objective positivity can be gained from an airframe that first flew in 1958 in the modern day. Well, don't say that to the Turkish Air Force; they're liable to find it a little offensive.
Turkish F-4 Terminator 2020 11 photos
Photo: Jerry Gunner
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Why is this? Because instead of spending billions on an entirely new domestic fighter airframe, the Turkish Air Force used help from an Israeli tech firm to turn a lumbering American brick famous for flying 60 years ago. And turned it into a legitimate modern warbird. How'd they do it? Well, to understand it all, we need to know the story behind the F-4 Phantom II in the dog days and the years after Vietnam.

In spite of a reputation in its day as the most capable jet fighter across three branches of the U.S. Military, the F-4 Phantom II was by no means a perfect airplane. Originally flying into battle without a cannon, Phantom pilots routinely found North Vietnamese MiG 17s, MiG-19s, and MiG-21s giving them all the hell they could handle. In the end, both sides of that conflict claimed favorable kill-to-loss ratios over their enemy.

Estimates from across all military branches which utilized Phantoms during Vietnam are pegged at roughly 150.5 shootdowns of enemy MiGs at a loss of roughly 40 F-4s. If true, that's not exactly an unfavorable KDR, but it's not exactly world-class in the way the Phantom's successor, the F-15, still is.

Even if its performance against Soviet MiGs was less than stellar, it didn't stop NATO nations and countries generally favored by the U.S. from buying Phantoms in droves for decades.

From Great Britain to Iran, from Israel to Greece, Japan, Australia, and of course, Turkey, over a dozen fighting forces across the globe have grown to love this classic American jet. Many of these nations lacked the financial fortitude to afford more contemporary American jets or to build domestic fighters of their own. In these cases, the best possible option was to upgrade what they already had. In short, they needed to address the Phantom's combat flaws found over Vietnam and somehow, in some way, compensate for them.

Turkish F\-4 Terminator 2020
Photo: Key.aero
In the case of Turkey, its Air Force received their first shipment of 40 F-4Es from U.S. surplus storage in 1974, only a year or so before the last American forces were withdrawn from the fallen capital of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), in April 1975. By 1994, Turkey held as many as 150 Phantoms procured from nations like the U.S. but also the German Luftwaffe. Had they been left as they were, chances were good that every last one would have been retired before the turn of the millennium.

Not wanting to squander billions of dollars worth of surplus fighter jets, the Turkish Air Force began mulling ways of extending the service life of their extant airframes. In 1995, their solution came in the form of an Israeli aerospace and defense company called Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). This wouldn't be the only case of Israeli tech firms souping up legacy Cold War jet fighters. The MiG-21 LanceR of Romanian Air Force fame was famously upgraded to NATO standards by the firm Elbit Systems.

This means, of course, that the Phantom and the MiG now serve on the same team, mutually upgraded via Israel. On first impressions alone, the Turkish Phantom Terminator 2020 looks identical to that any other F-4E variant. But as you'll find, the real goodies of this jet are found underneath the aluminum and composite metal skin.

Thanks to replacing upwards of 20 km (12.4 miles) of wiring, hydraulic lines, and other various riff-raff, the F-4E Terminator 2020 weighs an impressive 750 kg (1,653 lbs) less than the American-spec F-4E. For reference, that's roughly three-quarters the weight of a first-gen Mazda MX-5 that the Turkish super Phantom doesn't have to lug around. But that's not even close to all the neat tech the Phantom Terminator 2020 flies into battle carrying.

Turkish F\-4 Terminator 2020
Photo: Ron Eisele
The American F-4E's Westinghouse AN/APQ-120 radar was lauded as a solidly dependable suite in its day. As compact and powerful as it may have been, it pales in comparison to the Elta EL/M-2032 pulse Doppler radar system now shoved inside Terminator 2020 airframes. Originally built to serve a canceled attempt by the Israelis to build a domestic equivalent to the F-16, IAI's also upgraded F-16s, F-5s, Mirage IIIs, Sea Harriers, and a few others with the same system.

This absolute unit of radar is flanked by a modern suite of multifunctional displays (MFDs) that wouldn't look out of place on a fighter a quarter the age of this airframe. As for the pilot and radar operator helmets, they've been upgraded to support the modern Kaiser El-OP 976 wide-angle heads-up display (HUD) that'd be the envy of Vietnam-era Wild Weasel pilots. If any baddies do sneak up on this jet's six-o-clock, an Elta active electronic countermeasure (ECM) pod should help radar-guided missiles stay clear of this beast of a jet.

It's all in support of an ordnance package that's respectable even by gen-IV or V jet fighter standards. We're talking AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missiles (AAMs), AIM-7 Sparrow radar AAMs, Popeye, AGM Maverick, and AGM HARM air-to-surface missiles (AGMs), Paveway II laser-guided bombs, various kinds of cluster bombs, and rockets. It's all made to work in harmony thanks to a Westinghouse AN/ASQ-153 Pave Spike laser-targeting pod that's mounted any time this jet uses Sparrow AAMs or Paveway II bombs.

That's a lot of technical jargon, admittedly. But hopefully, the point is now clear. The F-4 Terminator 2020 is not to be trifled with. That includes Russian Sukhois, MiGs, and their Chinese copies that Turkey's affiliation with NATO puts the Terminator 2020 at odds with. In a dogfight against the Russian Su-27 or the Chinese J-11, Terminator pilots are going to have their hands full. But if all goes to plan, a well-coordinated, over-the-horizon attack (OHA) prevents the Ruskis from spotting Phantoms in the first place.

Turkish F\-4 Terminator 2020
Photo: Key.aero
As of 2023, around 30 Terminator 2020s out of 54 upgraded airframes continue to fly with the Turkish Air Force and aren't intended to leave service until the early-to-mid 2030s. This would mean this upgraded jet's service life will be at least 30 years from its first deployment in the year 2000.

At the bare minimum, this means that the McDonnell Douglas F-4's lineage will have served for a scarcely believable 72 years and likely a little bit more than that. Apart from the C-47/DC-3 of World War II legend and the MiG-21, no other airframe on the planet has even come close. And no, North Korean MiG-15s and Il-28s don't count.
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