Swiss Reject Gripen Jet Purchase

[Penguin]

The fighter plane’s supporters had said that neutral Switzerland needs the Gripen to defend its airspace. That claim got undermined in February with the forced landing of an Ethiopian Airlines Enterprise plane in Geneva. The hijacked plane had to be escorted by French and Italian jets as the Swiss air force doesn’t operate outside of business hours.

Saab Declines After Swiss Reject $3.5 Billion Jet Order - Bloomberg

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot .... (epic fail Swiss Air Force)

Well, that's what you get when you tell your citizens you only work/.fly during business hours ...

epic fail Swiss Air Force, talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[Luftwaffe]

They are happy because they have the entire world's money in their banks the massive profits generated will run the country for Ages to come.

 

[Skull and Bones]

F-18 SH is only the logical choice.

 

[Quwa]

Meh...it's normal for Swedish jet fighters to not be as prolific on the world market as they should be.

 

[flamer84]

Civilians having a say in Military aquisitions via referendums in retarded beyond measure.Just imagine how enemies can interfere with your military planning via the media,NGO's,paid voters,etc.Such things should not be let for the general population to choose.

 

[sancho]

Civilians having a say in Military aquisitions via referendums in retarded beyond measure

They didn't voted for or against one of the possible fighters, but if the procurement is needed at all and rejected that. They simply stated that the money could be more useful in other fields and since it's taxpayers money, it's not the worst option to have a say in certain areas.
The actual problem is not the referendum, but the insane naivity that the Swiss Defence Ministry and Air Force had, by evaluating 3 of the latest European fighters, when the neither have the money to buy them, nor even the basic need in operational terms. They could had easily leased Gripen C/Ds in the first place, bought 2nd hand Mirage 2000s, or F16s, which still would had been more than enough for the basic air policing roles the Swiss Air Force is used for. But they aimed too high, had to compromise after the evaluations, with the fighter actually didn't met their far to ambitious technical requirements and at the very end, got punished for this complete chaos by the taxpayer.

 

[Audio]

The largest and most renowned Swiss technical college, EPFL has a budget of only around 1 bill.€, but is generally very competitive against other European colleges, even ranked top spot on some ranking boards.
It is ranked 13th in the world with a meagre budget, so the logic is that if more money is pumped into it, the achievements will be even greater, more patent rights sold, more start-ups created etc etc....the ratio of € spent/top 10% of publications in the field is awesome.
It needs much more than a billion € as Switzerland has nothing to export except knowledge, human potential. To put it in perspective, Harvard gets ~ 25 bill€. but is ranked 5th with a much higher ratio of money spent for one top 10% publication in its field.....

CWTS Leiden Ranking 2014 - Ranking 2013

CWTS Leiden Ranking 2014 - Ranking 2013