Switzerland has joined a NATO partnership for the joint procurement of ammunition, with an eye to reducing costs and shortening delivery times, Bern said Friday.<\/p>\n
The Swiss Federal Office for Defence Procurement (Armasuisse) said in a statement that the militarily neutral country was now participating in the Ammunition Support Partnership (ASP).<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks to economies of scale, the costs of procurement can be reduced and the delivery times shortened,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Switzerland, which has been recognised as a neutral country since 1815, is not part of the NATO defence alliance.<\/p>\n
But it has been working with the alliance\u2019s Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) for 30 years, participating in support partnerships for air-to-air missiles, the ground-to-air missile Stinger and the Patriot air defence system.<\/p>\n
Armasuisse said Switzerland had now broadened its cooperation to also join the NSPA\u2019s ammunition partnership, which includes 26 other countries and encompasses a portfolio of more than 2,000 ammunition types in the land, air and water domains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe participating states can cover their ammunition requirements through joint procurements as part of the ASP,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn comparison with national procurements, this results in considerable cost savings, such as shorter delivery times, thanks to economies of scale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Armasuisse said the move would enable Swiss companies to participate in NSPA invitations to tender, and maintained that it would strengthen Switzerland\u2019s defence capability.<\/p>\n
The statement insisted that Switzerland\u2019s participation in the partnership was compatible with the country\u2019s long-standing neutrality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf one of the participating states becomes involved in an international armed conflict at a later point in time, Switzerland can withdraw from the agreement in order to comply with its obligations under neutrality law,\u201d it pointed out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Switzerland has joined a NATO partnership for the joint procurement of ammunition, with an eye to reducing costs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[272,27631,41,17],"class_list":["post-104852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-international","tag-mna","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116937440955983045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}