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WASHINGTON: Switzerland this morning picked Lockheed Martin's F-35A over the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon for its $6.5 billion fighter program. The win is quite a bright spot for the F-35 which is under funding pressure from the US Air Force and Congress because of what are estimated to be its sky-high sustainment costs.

"It's a very solid win. Switzerland has no industrial or program stake in the program, and Swiss procurement, like the country, is largely neutral, so this reflects very well on the F 35's overall technical appeal," said aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia of Teal Group in an email.

The decision to buy 36 F-35s today was made by the Swiss Federal Council (along with a decision to buy five Patriot missile defense batteries from Raytheon) and now goes to Parliament for approval.
Deliveries will begin in 2025, to replace Switzerland's current 30 Boeing F/A-18C/D aircraft that will retire in 2030.

The F-35 beat out its competitors Boeing's F/A-18; French firm Dassault's Rafale; and German-base Airbus's Eurofighter on both upfront procurement costs, and somewhat surprisingly, operating costs, the Federal Council explained in a statement.

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Callan opined that the Swiss win could give Lockheed Martin a leg up in the upcoming Finnish contest for 64 fighter jets to replace its F/A-18s, where its main competitor is assessed to be Saab's Gripen. The Finnish contest is one of the two biggest international fighter competitions in the works. The other is Canada's planned buy of 88 aircraft to replace its aging CF-18s. Capital Alpha has long put the F-35 as the top contender in that battle, with the other players being the Gripen and Boeing's Super Hornet.

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GAC06 said:

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Used to get intercepted by Swiss hornets pretty regularly when flying over Switzerland. Occasionally F-5's

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74OA said:

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At $79M, the A-model's purchase price is very competitive with late 4th gen fighters.

As for winning on ownership costs, that surprised me too. I wonder if the Swiss were convinced that the TR3/Block 4 model that they'll be eventually getting will be more mature and thus cheaper to operate than the current F-35 models?

Anyway, the Swiss were smart to future-proof themselves with a 5th gen fighter that's just scratching the surface of its long-term potential.

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About simulator use, I don't see how it can make the F-35 more competitive, considering other aircraft also have simulators.

I've seen in a video that when the US sold F18 to Switzerland, they lied about its size, so that it was supposed to fit in the aforementioned hidden caches, but in the end it didn't fit and it cost a pretty penny to upgrade the caches. True/false ?

I'm sure in 20 years the F-35 will have most of its issues fixed, and it has a smaller radar cross-section for sure. Don't know if that will still be relevant by then (who can say better radars, SAMs, and drones, will not change the picture completely ?). But it will be difficult to convince me that the choice is really about cost.

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