Home » Swiss Air Force to practise taking off and landing on motorway

Swiss Air Force to practise taking off and landing on motorway

Swiss Air Force to practise taking off and landing on motorway



The A1 motorway near Payerne will be closed to traffic when fighter jets are taking off and landing on it


Keystone / Anthony Anex

The Swiss Air Force has received the green light from the government for take-offs and landings of F/A-18 fighter jets on the A1 motorway between Avenches and Payerne in western Switzerland.

The motorway section will be closed for a maximum of 36 hours from June 4 to June 6, the government decided on Wednesday.

Planning is being carried out in close collaboration with the Federal Roads Office and the cantonal police of Vaud and Fribourg, the government added. During the closure of the motorway section, traffic will be diverted via the cantonal road network.

+ Swiss Air Force finally on call around the clock

With the exercise on the A1, the Swiss Armed Forces are pursuing the goal of testing and expanding the ability to decentralise their air defence resources. The air force wants to test whether its fighter aircraft can also be deployed from improvised locations, such as motorways.

The security situation in Europe has deteriorated further in recent years, particularly with the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, according to a government statement. It said that in order to continue to fulfil its core mission of protecting Switzerland and its population, the armed forces must consistently strengthen their defence capabilities in all areas of action – ground, air and cyberspace.

+ Cyberattack exposes Swiss Air Force documents on the darknet

The Swiss Air Force carried out similar tests on motorway sections in the 1970s and 1980s with Hunter and F5 Tiger fighter aircraft.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.


External Content





Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.



Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.



wingsuit jumper

More

Fatal wingsuit jump accident in canton Ticino




This content was published on




A 36-year-old man from Ticino lost his life on Saturday in Val Malvaglia, in the north of canton Ticino, during a wingsuit jump from a plane.



Read more: Fatal wingsuit jump accident in canton Ticino