Swiss Air Force To Practice Highway Operations For The First Time In Three Decades

The Swiss Air Force (SAF) will test the air defense system with landings and take-offs on a motorway as part of exercise “Alpha One”.

In June 2024 the Swiss Air Force will practice landing and take-off operations on a motorway as part of an exercise dubbed “Alpha One”. The goal of the operation is to assess the ability of the Swiss combat aircraft to operate in case airfields are unavailable or a decentralization of air defense is required.

In late 1950s, the Swiss Parliament approved the use of several makeshift runways on motorways, on which fighter planes could take off and land. The motorways were built exactly straight for two kilometer stretches and equipped with easily removable central barriers. This motorway sections were located in Münsingen (BE), Oensingen (SO), Alpnach (OW), Lodrino (TI), Sion (VS), Flums (SG) and Payerne (VD). During the exercises, these locations could become airfields in less than six hours, and about two hours after the last plane took off the motorway could be reopened.

The last exercise of this type in Switzerland was on Nov. 14, 1991 on the A2 motorway near Lodrino (Ticino). On that occasion, the highway was closed for 36 hours to let two SAF jets land: a Hawker Hunter and a Northrop F-5 Tiger.

List of Swiss Air Force (SAF) Exercises on highways:

Later this year, the SAF will resume this type of exercises and will do it near Payerne Air Base, where the highway is also connected to the air base by means of a taxiway.

The exercise will take place a little further from the base towards Avenches, with the intention of testing the efficiency of the military away from a prepared structure.

As explained by the Commander of Swiss Air Force Peter “Pablo” Merz, the goal of this exercise is to prepare crews and pilots to operate decentralized from military structures. In this way, in the event of a conflict, air defense coverage can be guaranteed even without being able to use actual air bases, but being able to use structures prepared if necessary.

Currently, the Swiss Air Force has three main air bases: Emmen (Lucerne), Payerne (Vaud) and Meiringen which keeps its Fliegerstaffel 11 fighters inside Cavernes (underground hangar) in the mountains of canton of Bern, the only active base with this type of setup in Switzerland (some old air bases with Caverns are in a “dormant” state). Alongside these bases there are also three bases dedicated to air transport: Dübendorf (Zurich), Locarno (Ticino) and Alpnach (Obwalden).

The runways of these air bases could be vulnerable to long-distance attacks in case of conflict, which is why pilots and crew must be prepared to operate from temporary and emergency airstrips.

Next June, with “Alpha One”, landings and take-offs of the F/A-18 Hornet fighters of the Swiss Air Force are expected on A1 motorway between Avenches and Payerne, with the closure once again for a period of 36 hours (also so as not to excessively damage civil traffic).

Highway operations were part of the standard training activities conducted mainly in Central, Eastern and Northern Europe during the Cold War, when the risk of a Soviet attack on NATO air bases would make them unavailable in a matter of hours. With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, highway take-offs and landings remained more or less a standard practice in Finland and Sweden but became less frequent in the rest of Europe and the rest of the world.

With the war in Ukraine and the increasing tensions with Russia, many air forces are practicing again for highway operations, including the Polish Air Force, that launched the domestic ROUTE 604 exercise in October 2023; and the Royal Air Force, that deployed its Typhoon to Finland in September 2023, to leverage the existing infrastructure and procedures the Finnish Air Force has in place and routinely tests with the F/A-18 Hornets.

Daniele Maiolo is a freelance photographer/reporter based in Switzerland.
Editor and photographer at Best Shot Aircraft, he is a composite materials specialist and aeronautical technician at an MRO Company at Zurich airport.

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.