Armed Forces Relations

International training cooperation enhances the capabilities and the credibility of our military training and enables training activities that for environmental reasons or because of the space required are no longer possible in the extensively built up area of Switzerland.

Comparison with other states enables us to assess the quality of our own training, discover and close gaps. Our Armed Forces need bilateral training cooperation in order to ensure the necessary transfer of expertise, to evaluate tactical procedures and to measure the performance of their systems.

The Armed Forces Relations within the International Relations Defence (IR D) organisation supports and consults the Chief of the Armed Forces (CAF) and Armed Forces Command in cultivating the bilateral relations of our Armed Forces with foreign armed forces. The Armed Forces Relations section elaborates concepts and topics, holds bilateral staff talks at CAF staff level, evaluates experiences with existing cooperation partners and deducts ensuing measures.

Our neighbour states are our primary partners in training cooperation. Other cooperation partners are states with comparable security policy interests, with identical military systems or who enable us to train special skills, such as low-level night flying.

In order to define cooperation areas with the partners, the IR D conducts staff talks with selected cooperation partners.

These periodic discourses on behalf of the CAF are held with Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Belgium and the United States.