Switzerland cannot defend itself against a full-scale attack and must boost military spending given rising risks from Russia, the head of its armed forces said.<\/p>\n
The country is prepared for attacks by “non-state actors” on critical infrastructure and for cyber attacks, but its military still faces major equipment gaps, Thomas Suessli told the NZZ newspaper.<\/p>\n
“What we cannot do is defend against threats from a distance or even a full-scale \u200cattack on \u200cour country,” said Suessli, who is \u200cstepping \u2060down at \u200cthe end of the year.<\/p>\n
“It’s burdensome to know that in a real emergency, only a third of all soldiers would be fully equipped,” he said in an interview published on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Switzerland is increasing defense spending, modernizing artillery and ground systems \u2060and replacing ageing fighter jets with Lockheed Martin F-35As.<\/p>\n
But the \u200cplan faces cost overruns, while \u200dcritics question spending on artillery \u200dand munitions amid tight federal finances.<\/p>\n
Suessli said \u200dattitudes towards the military had not shifted despite the war in Ukraine and Russian efforts to destabilize Europe.<\/p>\n
He blamed Switzerland’s distance from the conflict, its lack of recent war experience and the false belief that neutrality offered protection.<\/p>\n
“But that’s historically \u2060inaccurate. There are several neutral countries that were unarmed and were drawn into war. Neutrality only has value if it can be defended with weapons,” he said.<\/p>\n
Switzerland has pledged to gradually raise defense spending to about 1% of GDP by around 2032, up from roughly 0.7% now \u2013 far below the 5% level agreed by NATO countries.<\/p>\n
At that pace, the Swiss military would only be \u200cfully ready by around 2050.<\/p>\n
“That is too long given the threat,” Suessli said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Switzerland cannot defend itself against a full-scale attack and must boost military spending given rising risks from Russia, the head of its armed forces said. The country is prepared for attacks by “non-state actors” on critical infrastructure and for cyber attacks, but its military still faces major equipment gaps, Thomas Suessli told the NZZ newspaper. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59260,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59257\/revisions\/59260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}