News

The Federal Office for Defence Procurement armasuisse and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have launched the “A-VIPER” research project. It is based on the existing framework agreement between the Swiss Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) and the US Department of Defense (DoD). The aim of the project is to further develop the automated identification, analysis and prioritisation of software vulnerabilities in security-critical systems.

On 2 December 2025, Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis, the head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), received the Kazakh foreign minister, Yermek Kosherbayev, in Bern for an official visit. The talks centred on bilateral relations, regional cooperation in Central Asia and Switzerland's chairpersonship of the OSCE next year. The delegations also signed a memorandum of understanding for the implementation of the Blue Peace initiative.

A panel of experts has selected the three best proposals for the environmentally sound and safe recovery of ammunition from Swiss lakes. The proposals provide important approaches for further investigation; however, there are no plans to actually recover the ammunition, provided that the monitoring efforts continue to show that the ammunition is not having any negative effects on the environment.

The Swiss Transportation Safety Investigation Board (STSB) is publishing the prevention bulletin 2025/3 aviation.Prevention bulletins contain useful information in accordance with Art. 56 OSITI for the prevention of accidents and serious incidents. They were obtained as part of preliminary investigations into incidents for which an investigation is not opened for reasons of efficiency. The Prevention Bulletins are compiled in chronological order and include those incidents for which a preliminary investigation was completed by the end of the respective quarter. The information does not claim to be complete, is anonymised and is designed to contribute to the safety awareness of the public concerned.The German versions of the prevention bulletins are the originals and therefore authoritative.

Opening address by Federal Councillor Martin Pfister, Head of the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS), at Swiss Defence Industry Day at the Swiss Mission to NATO in Brussels, Monday, 1 December 2025

The Digital Switzerland Advisory Board meeting on 1 December 2025 focused on discussing the opportunities and potential of using and publishing open source software. Participants agreed that open source is a central pillar of digital sovereignty and should be promoted even more strongly in the future. The meeting was chaired by Federal Chancellor Viktor Rossi.

Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis will be in Vienna on 3-4 December 2025 to represent Switzerland at the annual Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The meeting will provide an opportunity to discuss the challenges facing the European security architecture, particularly the war in Ukraine. Switzerland, which will assume the OSCE chairpersonship in 2026, will reaffirm its priorities at the meeting.

On 1 December 2025 FDFA State Secretary Alexandre Fasel received the Brazilian Secretary General of Foreign Affairs Maria Laura da Rocha in Bern for political consultations. Both delegations took the opportunity to discuss key topics – from sustainability, the economy and multilateralism to regional security policy issues. Brazil is Switzerland's biggest trading partner in Latin America.

Florian Schütz, director of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), is travelling to Japan to strengthen international cooperation in the field of cybersecurity. The trip underscores the strategic importance of bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the face of increasing geopolitical tensions and hybrid threats.

Scientists at the Swiss Light Source SLS have succeeded in mapping a piece of brain tissue in 3D at unprecedented resolution using X-rays – non-destructively. The breakthrough overcomes a long-standing technological barrier that had limited the use of X-rays for such studies. With the SLS upgrade now complete, the path lies open to imaging much larger samples of brain tissue at high resolution – and to gaining new understanding of its complex architecture. The study, a collaboration between Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the Francis Crick Institute in the UK, is published in Nature Methods.

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) has filed an indictment against an employee of the former Credit Suisse SA (referred to below as CS) on a charge of money laundering in connection with loans to Mozambican state-owned companies. The OAG also alleges that CS and its parent company, the Credit Suisse Group SA (referred to below as the Credit Suisse Group) and their successor companies UBS SA and the UBS Group SA failed to prevent the offence as a result of organisational deficiencies. The indictment focuses on the termination of a commercial relationship by CS and the resultant transfer abroad of funds believed to be of criminal origin, without CS or its parent company reporting a suspicious transaction to the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland (MROS). The OAG has abandoned its criminal proceedings against another employee of the former CS.

You could be interested by new pages which have been published on the OFCOM website between 15.11.2025 and 30.11.2025.