China had pushed its defense spending to record highs as it builds a global force from the ground up.The communist country has leapfrogged past advancements that took Western nations decades to perfect and it's now looking to turn a profit on all that work.
Hurriyet today announced the race to equip Turkey with a long-range missile system is well underway and China's already sent other countries scrambling.
Europe, Russia, the U.S. and China are all competing for the $4 billion contract and Beijing's Precision Machinery HQ-9 is the lowest competing bid so far.
Word is the offer came in at $1 billion less than expected after Beijing tried to cut the original estimate by half.
Raytheon was forced to revise its offer to stay in the running, but officials there won't comment on just how much until the contract is selected next month.
In the end it may not matter if China loses money on the deal if the fears of some experts are proven justified, and it achieves access to new classified data.
Some believe that Russian and Chinese systems are incompatible with NATO systems and that with a successful bid, either of those countries would achieve access to classified NATO information.
Turkey has refused to exclude either China or Russia despite the fact it could, in fact, compromise NATO's entire "set of procedures".
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