Switzerland voted for its new fighter jets in 2020 by 8,670 votes. It signed for 36 of them in 2022 at a price it believed was fixed. In August 2025 the Americans explained that the price had never been fixed. In March 2026 the Federal Council gave up on 36 and said it would buy whatever the money stretched to, which is about 30.

On Sunday the SVP and FDP decided they are not accepting that.

Header image: a US Air Force F-35A on approach to Meiringen during the Swiss evaluation flights of 2019. No F-35 in Swiss markings exists yet, so no photograph of one does either.

IL Tages-Anzeiger reported this morning that the two parties want to raise the F-35 supplementary credit from 394 million francs to 1,044 million — roughly 650 million more — and buy all thirty-six after all. The National Council votes next week.

The Price That Was Never Fixed

This is the part that broke the programme, and it is worth getting right because the Swiss government spent four years saying something that turned out not to be true.

From 2021 the VBS described the F-35 deal as a fixed price: 6.035 billion francs, and not a franc more. In May 2022 the Federal Audit Office warned there was no legal certainty for any such thing and that no fixed price could be derived from the written contracts. The contract was signed in September 2022 anyway.

At the end of February 2025, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency put it in writing: from the American point of view, the fixed price had been a misunderstanding. Negotiations on whose reading was correct ran through 2025 and collapsed in August without agreement. The Americans put the additional cost for the 36 aircraft at somewhere between 650 million and 1.3 billion francs.

Switzerland commissioned legal opinions from Homburger in Zurich and Arnold & Porter in the United States. Neither ruled out that Switzerland would have to pay.

Two things then followed. The Federal Council decided on 12 December 2025 to buy the maximum number of jets affordable within the voter-approved envelope, and explicitly ruled out asking Parliament for more money. On 6 March 2026 it confirmed the consequence: the figure of 36 was abandoned. The VBS currently assumes about 30.

Withdrawing from the contract was examined and rejected on security-policy grounds. So were all options implying a further cut.

What 394 Million Actually Buys

Nothing. That is the point most coverage misses.

The 394 million francs in this year’s Armeebotschaft is simply the gap between the commitment credit Parliament approved in 2022 — 6.035 billion — and the indexed ceiling the voters authorised, now about 6.429 billion. It covers inflation, raw-material prices and the other factors the Americans are invoking. It does not add a single aircraft.

The Council of States passed it on 16 June 2026 by 34 votes to 8. A minority motion not to enter into the matter, tabled by the Social Democrat Franziska Roth, was rejected.

The Defence Minister, Federal Councillor Martin Pfister, who took over the department from Viola Amherd in March 2025 and therefore inherited the whole affair, did not accept the framing.

The Committee Said No. The Right Is Going Over Its Head.

The National Council’s security committee met on 11 August 2026 and worked through the Armeebotschaft. It approved the 394 million. And it rejected, by 13 votes to 10 with one abstention, a motion to procure 36 aircraft and raise the supplementary credit by 650 million to do it.

The SVP and FDP members voted as a bloc for the increase and lost. Because the committee majority went the other way, the proposal now reaches the plenary as a minority motion rather than as a committee recommendation — which means the right needs Die Mitte to carry it.

Their argument is arithmetic, and it is a good one. Fixed costs for training, IT and infrastructure barely change with fleet size, so spreading them over more airframes brings the unit cost down. The FDP National Councillor Heinz Theiler puts it at 213 million francs per jet at thirty aircraft, falling to 197 million at thirty-six.

That number is not invented for the occasion. A VBS expert group concluded that comprehensive air defence against the current threat picture would require 55 to 70 modern fighters. Thirty is less than half of the low end of the department’s own estimate.

The VBS spokesman Lorenz Frischknecht confirmed to the Tages-Anzeiger that a departmental calculation from the start of the year found 1,044 million would indeed be enough for all 36 — based on US Joint Program Office estimates, a risk reserve, and an assumed exchange rate of 0.80 francs to the dollar.

Why Die Mitte Is Hesitating

The obstacle is not that Die Mitte thinks thirty jets is enough. Several of its parliamentarians have said the opposite, loudly.

The SVP’s Werner Salzmann said much the same about the same decision, in blunter terms: that he was disappointed the Federal Council had not had the courage to order 36.

The objection is about sequencing. Die Mitte’s Reto Nause, who is also president of Allianz Sicherheit Schweiz, agrees thirty is too few but considers it irresponsible to commit money that has not been secured — army financing beyond the current framework is still unresolved. He would rather build a second, independent fighter fleet on a new financing plan than bolt 650 million onto this one.

Die Mitte also left its own mark on the credit in June. Benedikt Würth carried an amendment, by 38 votes to 3, requiring that future supplementary credit requests for inflation-driven overruns be put to Parliament Dopo a project completes rather than during it. Pfister said the details still needed working out before the National Council reading.

Federal Councillor Martin Pfister announcing the 6 March 2026 decision that dropped the figure of 36.

The Clock, and the Jets

The deadline is real. Switzerland has to give the US government a binding number by the second quarter of 2027 at the latest to hold its production slots. Coverage this morning shortened that to early 2027; the official federal wording is Q2.

Meanwhile the aircraft are being built. Main assembly of the first Swiss F-35A began at Lockheed Martin’s Marietta plant in Georgia, announced at the end of May. From mid-2027 the first eight Swiss jets will be based at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Arkansas so Swiss pilots can train on them. The first aircraft arrives in Switzerland from mid-2028, and the rest come from the final assembly line at Cameri in Italy.

Payerne will become the F-35 base and the F-35 training centre. Emmen takes over as the main base of the remaining F/A-18s from 2027.

And there is still no photograph anywhere of an F-35 in Swiss markings, because none exists yet. The closest thing Switzerland has to one sits in the Federal Palace.

What Is Really at Stake

Strip away the francs and this is a question about what a referendum authorised.

In September 2020 Swiss voters approved a spending ceiling, not a fleet. They did not vote for the F-35, which the Federal Council selected afterwards, and they did not vote for thirty-six aircraft. They voted for six billion francs, indexed, by the narrowest margin in modern Swiss defence politics — and the last time a fighter purchase went to the people, in 2014, they killed the Gripen outright.

The SVP and FDP position is that the ceiling was a budget, not a cap on the mission, and that buying too few jets to defend the country wastes the six billion already committed. The SP’s Priska Seiler Graf made the mirror-image argument after the December decision: that Switzerland has now simply spent six billion francs for fewer aeroplanes.

Both of them are right about the same fact. That is what makes next week interesting.

Sources: Tages-Anzeiger (Quentin Schlapbach, 7 September 2026), relayed by watson; admin.ch and vtg.admin.ch federal releases of 12 December 2025, 6 March 2026 and 28 May 2026; Amtliches Bulletin, Ständerat, business 26.025, 16 June 2026; parlament.ch SiK-N press release of 11 August 2026; SRF; NZZ; Eidgenössische Finanzkontrolle.