Turkey should cancel the purchase of Russia's S-400 missile defense system, if it wants F-35 fighter jets, U.S. NATO ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison said.
According to her, Russia is trying to "continue to probe ways" to disrupt and weaken the NATO alliance, therefore a Russian missile system under the same military control as an F-35 fighter jet was unacceptable.
"You have to make a choice. You can have one or the other but not both," she told CNBC, before repeating that Turkey stands to "lose association" with the F-35s that they have already ordered.
Hutchison said that NATO was "watching carefully" as the idea developed but it didn't want to see any threat to NATO's role as a "security umbrella for all of Europe and North America."
The U.S. ambassador to NATO said the U.S. was trying to convince the EU it was making a mistake. "NATO must be the priority. We must not have competition within the EU that would take away the dollars that we need for the strength to repel adversaries," Hutchison added.