Swiss armed forces landed fighter jets on a stretch of highway in the western part of the country, reports Reuters and News.bg. The purpose of the maneuvers was to test the ability of fighter jets to operate from improvised locations given heightened national security concerns in Europe.
The exercise was broadcast live on Swiss television. The F/A-18s were supposed to land and take off from a rural stretch of the A1 highway between the towns of Avenche and Payerne in French-speaking Switzerland.
Several spectators and emergency services watched as the twin-engine supersonic planes landed.
"It went very well", summed up Alain von Buuren, the first pilot to land on the highway after disembarking from a US-made jet.
Last week, the government specified that the test was necessary because all Swiss air force assets are concentrated at three airfields in Payern, Meiringen and Emmen, making them vulnerable to enemy long-range weapons systems.
To mitigate the risk of attack with long-range weapons, the Swiss armed forces rely on the ability to move assets and deploy them from decentralized, possibly temporary locations, the government said.
The highway landing was the first since 1991 in neutral Switzerland, which later this month will host a major summit aimed at paving the way for peace in Ukraine - more since two years after the Russian invasion of the country.