RUAG

RUAG today is not the group most reference books describe, and the difference matters. The original RUAG was created in 1999 out of four former Swiss federal armament works. At the start of 2020 it was split into two independently run groups. RUAG MRO Holding AG, headquartered in Bern and trading simply as RUAG, kept the Swiss domestic defence business and remains wholly owned by the Swiss Confederation under the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport. RUAG International Holding AG kept the internationally traded businesses and has since sold most of them, retaining space as Beyond Gravity along with aerostructures and international MRO. This listing covers the Bern company.

The divestments were substantial and are the reason older descriptions of RUAG as an ammunition, simulation and space group no longer hold. RUAG Ammotec went to Beretta Holding in mid 2022, with the Swiss military ammunition arm carved out and continuing separately as SwissP Defence. The Simulation and Training business was sold to Thales in April 2022. RUAG Australia was taken over by ASDAM in September 2022. What remains in Bern is a services and integration business built around one customer, with roughly 2,950 staff across about 28 sites.

Air Systems is the centre of excellence for Swiss military aviation. RUAG maintains, repairs and overhauls the Swiss Air Force fleet, including F/A-18 fighters, Super Puma and Cougar helicopters and the trainer fleet, and it carried out the structural work behind the F/A-18C/D service life extension that keeps those aircraft flying until the F-35A arrives. The work covers upgrade programmes and the development, manufacture and integration of aviation subsystems as well as scheduled maintenance.

Land Systems handles the army's heavy equipment. That means maintenance, overhaul and upgrade of main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, Switzerland's Leopard 2 and CV9030 fleets among them, plus the wheeled Piranha family and support vehicles. RUAG also operates and supports the simulators the armed forces train on, and maintains military communications equipment.

C5I is the newest and fastest changing division, covering command, control, communications, computers and intelligence. RUAG runs a C5I Campus at Thun as the delivery environment for highly classified IT projects, with a laboratory for rapidly integrating new sensor, intelligence and effects networking solutions for the armed forces. Cyber security services sit here too. A real estate division manages the defence property portfolio, and corporate services rounds out the management structure introduced in 2025.

RUAG's legal form is itself under review. In November 2025 the Federal Council opened a consultation on converting RUAG MRO from a private law company into a special purpose public law corporation, which would tighten federal oversight and formalise what is already in practice a national capability rather than a commercial defence contractor. The practical effect of the whole restructuring is that RUAG in Bern is now best understood as the Swiss Armed Forces' in-house engineering and sustainment organisation, incorporated as a company. It does not export weapon systems, it does not compete for foreign primes' subcontract work at any scale, and its order intake is dominated by federal armament programmes rather than the international market the pre-2020 group chased.