Lockheed’s F-35 topples competition in Swiss fighter contesthttps://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/06/30/lockheeds-f-35-topples-competition-in-swiss-fighter-contest/WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has emerged victorious in Switzerland’s $6.5 billion fighter competition, beating out entrants from Eurofighter, Dassault and Boeing.
Over the course of the program, Switzerland plans to spend up to 6 billion Swiss francs (U.S. $6.5 billion) to buy 36 F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing models to replace its aging Hornet fleet, the government announced Wednesday.
Switzerland will also purchase five Patriot missile defense systems from Raytheon Technologies, which defeated the SAMP/T system from France’s Eurosam.
The Swiss currently operate the pretty much obsolete F-5E and the aging F/A-18C. The latter is a 1987 upgrade that allowed the fighter to use the AMRAAM and Harpoon missiles, plus some avionics upgrades. Going with the F-35 would be a generational upgrade rather than an evolutionary upgrade.
