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Comment by immmmmm | Hacker News Reader

i'm swiss, our army is a joke, especially when it comes to IT. a 4+B CHF joke tho.

while i support the use of swiss secure solutions for critical stuff, it should be noted our beautiful militia is mostly there for a reason: allow male teenagers to become men, namely 1) play with explosives, 2) get drunk and 3) loose their virginity with prostitutes.

they will probably allow back these apps for military operations when they discover these are more secure than their proprietary communication systems.

can't wait they get their F35..

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Swiss Army Bashing, count me in!

You're completely right, unfortunately. For a country that prides itself with its neutrality, we sure do like our armed boy scout club.

I do have hopes though that their F35 plans won't work out; the last vote was extremely tight, if it was already clear back then that they'd go for the F35, I'd wager they would have lost.

i think Neutrality died when the Crypto AG story came out.

being CIA's back office and being "neutral" is a quite interesting standpoint..

regarding F35 it's quite possible this get canceled, indeed it was close.

this plane choice seems also really bad. it doesn't turns well due to low lift (perfect in mountains ranges, especially when you already crash a jet every few years on a cliff), "hi-tech" sensors platform with a little less than a million bugs (perfect for the reasons above) and probably a maintenance nightmare due to stealth and other gimmicks.

wouldn't be surprised F35 maintenance double our army budget.

oh yeah and badly negotiated contracts so peanuts for our beautiful local weapons manufacturers (not that i like them btw).

You guys do have awesome air force exercises at the Axalp range! Can't deny that..

They've been trying to up their game since the 2016 cyber attacks, I know the army tried to hire top security and cryptography experts. I don't know if they're very successful though, the intersection of (Swiss citizen, PhD level in infosec, willing to work for the military) is probably fairly small.

Yeah, I saw the Swiss Army recruiting desk at a Swiss security trade show.... lots of polite conversation, not a lot of "conversions", I'd say. Also, worked in an EPFL lab dedicated to security with a crushing majority of non-Swiss PhD candidates.

Yep, all of this is unfortunately true. The whole thing is a sad joke, both the militia and the professional army.

I thought the Swiss Army was extremely well-regarded? It has a good reputation in the UK. I worked with one of your Grenadiers once and he was very professional and competent.

It's the same for almost everything associated with the country, what you see from the outside has very little to do with the actual thing. The country has been very good at developing the "swiss brand", generally speaking.

In practice the swiss army is a giant live action role-play, where young males go to be paid for playing with firearms and be drunk together.

Note that you can be very professional while larping, it's not contradictory.

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