Originally Posted by
Just This Once...
Self-proclaiming comment there, with the dumb quote.
The Swiss do of course contribute to the continent's QRA cover with cooperative nations flying missions over each-others airspace with coordinated hand-overs when required. The only unusual part of the Swiss QRA mission is that, at times, it does not provide any of its own aircraft to the mix and is reliant on others for the air segment. The ground environment is 24/7 and provides picture to other nations as well as the legal RoE stuff for cross-boarder missions. Due to geography and coverage most live QRA intercepts undertaken by the Swiss AF tend to take place over surrounding countries and vice versa.
The Swiss do train and deploy outside of their boarders, including the army. They provided support to the KFOR NATO mission in Kosovo from the get-go and last time I had any dealings with them they still had a reinforced company in Kosovo.
Regarding their selection of potential threat aircraft, well it would be rather odd if they decided that the most likely threat to model against was EF/Typhoon, F-16 or indeed any of the types they coordinate their QRA missions with, rather than a type that was an actual adversary in the original KFOR mission.
So not providing its own aircraft to the international QRA effort then? That's some contribution. And cooperation with its immediate neighbours is about national security, not "defending the continent".
Not concerned with ground cooperation, that's not the issue being discussed.
NATO KFOR and other such missions are not "defending the continent", and they do not include an air component as is bring discussed.
As I stated before, if the threat the Swiss have to defend against is a Flanker then things have gone very wrong for them and everyone else, and no fighter type is going to be of much realistic use to them.
Dumb indeed.