The Swiss Federal Council, after considering several contenders for the replacement of its F-5E Tiger II and F / A-18C / D Hornet and against the wish of some councilors who opted for a European solution embodied in the Rafale, proposed to parliament the purchase of 36 Lockheed Martin F-35A fighter jets and five batteries of Raytheon Patriot anti-aircraft missiles.
The evaluation carried out by the Swiss authorities revealed that these two systems offer the highest overall benefit at the lowest total cost. Which confirms the rumors of the best performance of the F-35 in the tests.
The Federal Council is confident that these two systems are best suited to protect the Swiss population from air threats in the future. The Federal Council adopted this decision today, at its meeting on June 30.
The new combat fighter (NFK program) and the long-range anti-air defense system (GBAD program) are part of the Air2030 project, which aims to achieve a complete renovation of the Swiss airspace protection systems by 2030.
To arrive at this decision, which will undoubtedly generate controversy in Bern, the Federal Council relied on a comprehensive technical evaluation of four modern combat aircraft, for the NFK (New Combat Aircraft):
Airbus Eurofighter Typhoon, Germany
Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, USA
Lockheed Martin F-35A, USA
Dassault Rafale, France
And two candidates for a long-range GBAD (Ground Based Air Defense System) system:
SAMP / T from Eurosam, France
Patriot of Raytheon, USA
This was the resolution of the technical/commercial evaluation of the offers. It is a very important step and prior to the award of a contract (which value will be greater than 6.4 billion dollars). However, it must still go through the positive vote of the Swiss Parliament, and it cannot be ruled out that dissatisfied sectors promote a new popular referendum, like the one that ended up overturning the Gripen contract in 2014.
