But that is where you assume that the only mission that is of importance to the Swiss should be air policing (which wasn’t the Typhoon’s strongest suit anyway as evaluations pointed out) and not any other type of mission, whereas the Swiss Govt. and its Air Force have every right (some would say duty) to prepare for the worst scenario and hope that they never need to perform any other mission other than air policing.

Does that mean they should sacrifice interceptor capabilities they would regularly use, in favour of ground attack ones they would most likely never use?

A German, French, or Italian threat is more plausible than any of the other bogeymen one might conjure up to justify a fast jet capability for SwAF.

It is also a small nation in a benign security environment, with correspondingly limited military spending and, within that limited budget, many other requirements that need to be addressed as dictated by the nation’s strategic geography as a small nation bordered by larger powers on all sides. As such, Switzerland must exercise far more prudence in defence matters than, for example, the UK — a large nation having borders with nobody.

we aren’t in the 1930’s now, there is no danger of Switzerland being annexed by their neighbours.

And being landlocked has some significant advantages for defence. No expensive Navy for example.

EU is too poor and too deficient in industrial capacity/training too fight a strike war. Russian tanks can still fight under protection of upgraded MIG-29/Su-27 and mobile airdefence systems.

I will even predict Saudi/Israel/UAE/Qatar far more important than EU. thats how wealth concentration changed. Ruaf need to deal with former and the later will automatically fall in line.

You do realize that Europe is BY FAR the wealthiest continent in the world?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_continents_by_GDP_%28nominal%29

That may change, but it will still be a long time off.

I would like to think that one day we will see a UK based Harrier on the airshow circuit.

It must surely rank as one of the all time great British aircraft 😎

Do they still have a Spitfire there? MK.21 IIRC.

Blue skies

I thought they’d go with something pretty half hearted like they did with last years invasion stripes, but this looks fantastic. 🙂

Reminds me of the special scheme one of the retiring Harriers wore.