After many delays and breakdowns, the Department of Defense (DDPS) plans for the first time to abandon the project to acquire drones. This is what URS Loher’s arms chief said on Friday on Alemanic Radio SRF. The project should have been completed in 2019.
Although we have long been of the opinion that an interruption was not possible, we have now “come to a point where the question arises whether the famous last drop made the vase overflow,” said Urs Loher during a recording Friday of The Samstagsrundschau SRF show.
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It refers to the automatic landing system which should have been delivered in September. The Israeli company Elbit could not comply with the deadline, the DDPS postponed the deadline to January and June 30. But “these two milestones were not respected either,” deplored the head of armaments.
Years of delay
The purchase of the DRONE Recognition System ADS-15, unmanned and unarmed, for 250 million francs, had been decided by the Parliament in 2015. The offer of the Israeli company Elbit includes six drones, including ground components, simulators and logistics. The end of the project was scheduled for 2019, but was then postponed to 2026.
Five drones have certainly arrived in Switzerland, but they still do not meet the requirements that the Confederation imposes on flying objects without pilot. Meanwhile, the project costs have increased to 298 million francs.
Several sites
In addition to the automatic landing system, the “Detect and Avoid System” (DAA) – developed by the federal company RUAG MRO – is not yet ready, according to a report in Federal Finance Control (CDF) in January. This system should allow drones to take off without being accompanied and at any time, because it detects obstacles such as paraglides, which do not emit signals.
This is why drones will probably not be able to fly unaccompanied before 2027 and 2028, at most in controlled airspace and at night. According to the CDF and Armasuisse, the drones will not be operational in an unaccompanied manner before 2029 at the earliest.
“Unreliable supplier”
In its report, the CDF also criticized the Israeli supplier: it is not reliable and the project management has trouble directing it. “The project is in crisis,” writes the CDF. You have to act urgently. The financial room for maneuver is low and additional costs are to be feared.
At the time, Armasuisse still explained that an abandonment was not an option, that most of the money granted had been spent or initiated, that the supplier had also invested a lot and that the army needed drones.
This point of view seems to have changed, despite the possible consequences. If the acquisition project was to be interrupted, Urs Loher personally starts from the principle that Elbit will come “certainly with reconvention requests”. There will then be a long legal battle whose outcome is uncertain.
ats/cab
