F-18s and F-5s provide Davos World Economic Forum 2015 Air Defense

Here’s the Swiss Air Force jets providing air defense over Davos WEF meeting.

From Jan. 21 to 24, the Swiss Air Force contributed to the security of the WEF international conference held at Davos, in Switzerland.

A circular No-Fly Zone, centered in Davos, with a radius of 25 NM, was enforced by the Swiss F/A-18 Hornets of the Fliegerstaffel 11 and the F-5E Tigers of the Fliegerstaffel 8 from Meiringen airbase, main operating base of the air security operation.

Needless to say, all the aircraft taking part in the air policing missions carried live air-to-air missiles: the Tiger jets carried AIM-9P Sidewinder IR-guided AAM (Air-to-Air Missiles) at the wingtips, whereas the Hornets carried 2 AIM-9X Sidewinders at the wingtips and either two AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missiles) or one AIM-120 and the ATFLIR (Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infra Red) pod underneath the fuselage.

Some of the Hornets had the text “STDY 121.5” message on their centerline external fuel tank: a message to any intruder to switch to the international emergency frequency 121.5 MHz to get instructions from the interceptor and the air defense radar.

Many F-5Es sported the former Patrouille Suisse color scheme.

The images in this post were taken at Meiringen by The Aviationist’s contributor Alessandro Fucito.

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About David Cenciotti

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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.