In a vote last Sunday, 53.7% of Swiss voters rejected a government plan to fund the procurement of 22 Gripen fighter jets which would have cost at least $3.5 billion. In a public statement, Susanne Leutenegger Oberholzer, a Social Democrat member of parliament said: “The people have spoken. We surely don’t have the money for such unnecessary acquisitions.” Supporters of the plan such as Federal Councilor and defense minister, Ueli Maurer argued “This decision has the effect of creating security gaps” but a majority of voters expressed their belief that money spent to procure the planes could be better be spent on other things.

This story should be especially striking to U.S. citizens, who are constantly told they live in a Democracy yet don’t have a chance in hell of voting down similar military spending proposals or ones much worse like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project. According to a Bloomberg article quoting Pentagon officials, the program’s life-cycle cost including development and decades of support is projected to top $1.5 trillion. The manufacture of the F-35 funnels business to a global network of contractors including 1,300 suppliers in 45 states, making it the defense project “too big to kill”. Despite a number of high profile technical problems and numerous delays the F-35 remains in development and is expected to go into full production in 2019, seven years later than planned. By that time other countries are likely to have cheaper unmanned drone fighters with superior performance and capabilities. How does this colossal waste of money and time make us safer?