Corseted by the “financial tire”, Switzerland says goodbye to some F-35 fighter jets it wanted to buy from the US
United States Air Force F-35A Lightning II jets land at RAF Lakenheath for training exercises in the United Kingdom on September 11, 2025. Illustrative image. PHOTO: Mark Cosgrove/News Images / Avalon / Profimedia
Switzerland will not be able to purchase all 36 planned American F-35 fighter jets due to additional costs presented by the United States, the federal authorities in Bern announced on Friday, according to AFP.
“Due to the foreseeable additional costs, it is not financially possible to maintain the originally planned number of 36 F-35As,” the Swiss government said in a statement.
As a result, the government instructed the Ministry of Defense “to purchase as many F-35A aircraft as the financial envelope voted by the Swiss population allows, i.e. 6 billion francs” (6.4 billion current euros), the statement said.
The Swiss have approved with a very small majority, just over 50%, a 6 billion franc tire to equip the country with a new fleet of fighter planes, the current F/A-18s will be out of service by 2030, notes Agerpres.
When it chose the F-35, the government claimed that the US aircraft was by far the best and most advantageously priced of all competitors (Rafale, F/A-18 and Eurofighter), and guaranteed that the purchase price would not change, citing US assurances to that effect.
On June 25, however, the Swiss government announced that the US was citing additional costs of between 650 million and 1.3 billion Swiss francs due to inflation, commodity price developments and other factors.
“Discussions held this summer with the United States showed that Switzerland cannot impose the fixed price agreed in the contract for the F-35A fighter jet,” the Bern government explained in the statement issued on Friday.
