Defence procurement: Swiss Armaments Chief Urs Loher calls for a rethink – “too slow along the entire chain”

While warfare changes within weeks, defence procurement drags on for years. In the view of Urs Loher, Switzerland's Armaments Chief, this gap is one of the greatest challenges to the country's defence capability. On 19 October, at the first Sicherheitsforum Drohnen Schweiz in Thun, he therefore called for a fundamental rethink. In doing so, he was in line with Benedikt Roos, Lieutenant General (Korpskommandant) of the Swiss Armed Forces, who had earlier called for more speed and less bureaucracy.

Loher acknowledged: “I am aware that we are too slow in many areas.” In his view, however, the problem begins long before procurement itself – with the question of what kind of warfare the Swiss Armed Forces need to prepare for in the first place.

The core of his argument was that an army in normal peacetime operation will hardly reach the pace that war imposes. That makes it all the more important to lay the foundations today for being able to react quickly in an emergency.

Three speeds, one problem

According to Loher, modern warfare has different innovation cycles: on the battlefield, tactics and countermeasures change within a few weeks, technologies evolve over months, while political decisions, funding and procurement programmes often take years.

This is most evident in the war in Ukraine. At the start of the war, an effective countermeasure sometimes followed a new technology only after months; these cycles have now shrunk in some cases to just one to two weeks.

This poses a fundamental challenge for traditional defence projects. Loher cited the Swiss reconnaissance drone system ADS 15: the project began back in 2008 and was originally due to be completed in 2020. It has now stretched over almost two decades.

Loher explicitly did not want to derive blanket criticism of the project management from this. Technical risks, changed requirements and external circumstances had contributed to the delays. The example nonetheless showed that conventional procurement models are not suitable for every technology.

“Perhaps we lack imagination”: criticism of military thinking

Particularly notable was Loher's criticism of military thinking: new technology is often simply slotted into existing organisational structures instead of questioning those structures themselves. He summed up the problem as follows: “We take a drone and look for a place for it in an organisational chart.”

Instead, the question should be what a military organisation would look like in which drones, software and people are conceived together from the outset.

“Perhaps our greatest need to catch up is not in drone technology at all, but in the creativity with which we take its consequences seriously.”
Urs Loher, Armaments Chief, Switzerland

In this context, Loher outlined six possible developments in warfare:

• communication and command structures that are disrupted
• front line and hinterland, whose clear boundaries are increasingly dissolving
• a battlefield that is transparent
• low-cost systems that are once again appearing in large numbers
• software cycles that are becoming ever shorter
• the interplay of very different capabilities, which is gaining in importance

The resilience of military command will also be decisive. Armed forces must remain capable of acting even when communication networks have failed, information is contradictory and familiar command procedures no longer work.

Differentiating defence procurement by technology

The Armaments Chief therefore argued for differentiating procurement procedures by technology. Software or rapidly changing drone systems could not be handled according to the same timeline logic as a fighter aircraft or an infrastructure project.

It is equally decisive not merely to procure new capabilities but to actually integrate them into training, operational procedures and logistics. This requires more testing, open interfaces and a willingness to accept failure. Under certain circumstances, an error identified early may be worth more than an insight at the end of years of development.

At the same time, Loher made clear that the existing procedures cannot simply be abolished. Democratic oversight, legal certainty and the responsible use of public funds are indispensable. The aim is rather to create, already in peacetime, the room for manoeuvre that allows rapid decisions in an emergency.

The “Eiger” project as a lever for change

The “Eiger” project plays a key role here: it is intended to bring the Swiss Armed Forces, Armasuisse, industry and research into much closer cooperation. Loher argued for a capable defence ecosystem in which development, software, sensors, secure communications, production, testing and training mesh with one another.

Not every component needs to come from Switzerland itself. What matters is having its own key competences in software, data, interfaces and industrial scaling. Industry, in turn, needs reliable prospects, suitable testing opportunities and procurement models that allow continuous further development.

Preparing instead of frantic improvisation

In closing, Loher returned to his initial question: can Switzerland keep pace with modern warfare? His answer was nuanced. The full speed of a war may only emerge once a real crisis creates pressure. But Switzerland must not rely on that.

For even under the greatest time pressure, missing production capacity, inadequately trained personnel or untested procedures cannot be replaced at short notice.

“We will have to improvise in an emergency. Whether that turns into the ability to act or merely frantic muddling through is, in my view, already being decided today.”
Urs Loher, Armaments Chief, Switzerland

Loher's message was thus unambiguous: procuring faster is not enough for the Swiss Armed Forces. Above all, they must learn to think about future conflicts differently, translate new technologies into military capabilities more swiftly and create now the conditions for the pace that could determine their ability to act in an emergency.