The General Directorate of Armaments of the Swiss Confederation has, in accordance with the recommendations of experts from armasuisse and the Air Force, selected the Thales Skyview system to modernize the sub-components of the country's aerial surveillance system . The Swiss authorities justify this choice, in the face of competing offers from Saab and Raytheon, by the best performance-price ratio of the French system. This contract is one of the 3 components of the Air2030 program, which aims to modernize Air Defense and the country's air force.
The Skyview system makes it possible to integrate, merge, and restore all data from surveillance radars and communication systems to present a clear and usable vision of the airspace and the various events occurring there. . This acquisition, valued at €210 million, will be proposed to the Swiss parliament in 2020 for validation.
Aerial surveillance systems, like Thales' Skyview, rarely make the headlines, but represent a significant portion of French exports included in the BITD. The Skyview alone equips the air forces of 12 countries across 43 processing and analysis centers. With $9,5 billion in turnover in 2018 for its Defense components, out of $18 billion in global annual turnover, Thales is the leading player in the French Defense industry, and is present in the vast majority of equipment defense of the country, like the Rafale, the FREMM and FDI frigates, the Suffren and Scorpene submarines, or the EBRC Jaguar and VBMR Griffon armored vehicles.
