Will Switzerland select the F35 despite itself?

The days go by and are not alike in Bern. Indeed, while llast week, the French proposal and the plane Rafale seemed to have won the competition for the replacement of the F / A 18 Hornets and the Swiss F5 Tiger IIs, the Swiss media seem to know, since the beginning of the week, that now, the American proposal and the Lockheed-Martin F35A would be on track to win the tender. According to sources cited by both the written press and television news, this proposal would offer a “quality-price” ratio “far” exceeding those of other competitors. However, the words reported by Swiss journalists, as well as the radical change in posture just a few days before the official announcement, raise questions about the sequence of events that led to this situation.

Indeed, everything suggests, given the arguments put forward by Berne in favor of choosing the F35A, that a last minute offer would have been sent at the end of last week by Lockheed Martin to the Swiss authorities in charge of carrying out this call for tender. The key word presented, the “quality-price ratio” of the F35A, suggests that a new price offer would have been made by Washington, to the extent that the quality of the F35A cannot have changed significantly in recent days. Therefore, everything suggests that the Lockheed-Martin commercial team and the American plenipotentiary assistance teams would have succeeded in proposing an offer structured to precisely meet the criteria of the call for tenders, giving it a significant difference vis-à-vis - vis-à-vis its competitors, to the point that some journalists in Europe even question whether the confidentiality of the offers is respected.

This (temporary) conclusion does not, however, seem to generate overwhelming enthusiasm on the part of the Swiss authorities. Indeed, according to the Swiss media, they consider today that given the gap between the American offer and that of these competitors, they would not have “other choices” than choosing the F35A, a choice of words loaded with meaning in this context, whereas previously, the preference for the French offer seemed to satisfy the majority of those questioned. However, all hope does not seem lost for the French plane, with several elements suggesting that Berne intends to offer Paris and Berlin the capacity to respond to this last minute American offer.

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