ANKARA, April 18. /TASS/. Turkey is not keeping its S-400 air defense system bought from Russia is a standby alert condition to save resources, Ismail Demir, the head of Turkey's Defense Industries, said on Tuesday.

"We have purchased the system to defend us from aerial threats. The S-400 system ensures defense from ballistic missiles and high-speed shells. But you activate such an air defense system only when there is a threat or a risk of a threat. They you deploy its radar and activate it. When there are no threats, there is no need in deploying the system in order to save its resource. The system is fully ready for the use [when threats arise]," he said in an interview with the TRT television channel.

He also said that it will take Turkey an estimated six years to bring the domestically developed air defense system to the level of Patriot or C-400 missile defense systems. "The most difficult thing in this context is to ensure defense from long-range ballistic missiles. Now we ensure our defense from such threats thanks toS-400. We will have to travel some way to have a domestic system of this level. It will take at least six years," he noted.

Touching upon a possible purchase of the second S-400 regiment, Demir noted that now the sides are looking at variants of technology exchange. "At current, second stage, we say that we have our own production system and interest in using domestic resources (including to manufacture air defense system’s components - TASS). It will take some time to settle this issue, discussions [with the Russian side] of the details have taken time and will take more time," he said.

Chief of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation Dmitry Shugayev told TASS in August 2022 that the contract for the supply of second S-400 regiment to Turkey had been signed. The contract, in his words, provided for the localization of certain components of the system.