Swiss Air Defense Goes 24/7
"As of 2021 the Swiss Air Force is to provide 24/7 availability of jet interceptors to deal with any emergency, like a commercial, or any other aircraft, entering Swiss airspace without permission. Before that the F18s were only available during business hours and it took six years to get Swiss voters to agree to the added expense of round-the-clock F-18 availability. It cost the Swiss spending an additional $34 million a year and the hiring a hundred additional personnel to achieve this new level of readiness. The cause of this was change was an embarrassing February 2014 incident where Swiss F-18s failed to take off and intercept a hijacked Ethiopian Boeing 767 that was known, for several hours, to be headed their way. Initially two Italian fighters intercepted and escorted the 767 as it entered Italian air space near Sicily. When the 767 entered French air space on its final approach to Switzerland two French fighters took over and as the airliner entered Swiss air space the French fighters stuck with it. Swiss F-18s would normally take over at this point but, as was later explained, budget cuts and noise rules prevented the Swiss F-18s from taking off. Switzerland already had rules in place that would allow French fighters to enter Swiss air space in such an emergency. However, the French fighters could not fire their weapons without Swiss permission. The 767 landed at Geneva and the copilot, who planned to request political asylum, was arrested.
Swiss officials explained that because of budget cuts the air force could no longer afford 24/7 availability of its F-18s for emergencies. Exceptions could be made, but in this case they weren’t. That was apparently because there are also noise restrictions on F-18 use and since the 767 was arriving before 8 AM, the jets taking off would have been in violation of local aircraft noise rules. The Swiss did not see any problem with all this because they knew the hijacker wanted asylum and a French fighter escort would do. The neighbors were not happy with having to cover for the Swiss and there were subsequently similar incidents in other countries that demonstrated how disastrous the old Swiss approach was.
Even before the 2014 incident there was a situation where a Russian airliner with engine trouble entered Swiss air space outside of the air force business hours and no aircraft went to meet the airliner, which crashed killing all on board. The accident investigation revealed that if the airliner had a fighter escort it could have landed safely because the fighter pilots could have provided information the Russian pilot needed to get the plane down safely. Because no such escort was available there was a fatal crash."
A 9 to 5 Air Force? lol
https://strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/articles/20210207.aspx
= new reply since forum marked as read
