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The National Council decided this week that Switzerland should upgrade. But that can take time, as the example of the Cobra mine thrower shows.
It is called Cobra and is a mine launcher that is mounted on a wheeled armored personnel carrier, i.e. it is mobile. The Cobra can fire 12 cm grenades up to 10 km. The Cobra is manufactured by the Swiss armaments company Ruag.
Ready to fire in 30 seconds, according to a promotional video. But in order for the Cobra to shoot so fast, the army must have it first. She ordered it back in 2016 and is still waiting for delivery. Production has been delayed by three years.
Now the DDPS and the bourgeois parliamentary majority want to order more Cobras, as Defense Minister Viola Amherd said in parliament this week: “The army can quickly procure a second tranche and equip all associations.”
But this “rapid procurement”, as the defense minister calls it, should be put into perspective. Because the delivery of the already ordered mine launchers is planned from 2024. If the army now wants to order additional copies, the production and assembly will take two more years, according to Ruag. So it’s not that quick.
Late deliveries of armaments are not uncommon
In fact, procurement of armaments rarely went as quickly as governments would like, explains military economist Marcus Keupp from the Military Academy at ETH Zurich: “There is a great deal of empirical research that finds that armaments are almost always delivered a little later than is actually the case thought.”
So the Cobra project is not an exception, but rather the rule. The Federal Council and Parliament want to upgrade the army quickly. But armaments projects cannot be implemented overnight.