Paris Air Show Busy Despite Absentees
A round-up of the defense highlights from the world’s biggest aerospace exhibition.
The Aero 3A news agency flew a Quad Phantom mini-UAV over the static park at this year’s Paris Air Show, equipped with a high-definition camera. (Photo: Aero 3A ASDS Media Bank)
The Aero 3A news agency flew a Quad Phantom mini-UAV over the static park at this year’s Paris Air Show, equipped with a high-definition camera. (Photo: Aero 3A ASDS Media Bank)

A number of major defense-oriented companies chose not to exhibit at the Paris Air Show this year, including BAE Systems, Eurofighter and Saab. They joined Northrop Grumman, which has not appeared at Le Bourget since 2011. Other companies, Finmeccanica and Raytheon among them, had a scaled-back presence. However, the show remains a magnet for second- and third-tier suppliers, and the show was quite busy. In fact, it was busy enough to generate the usual traffic problems that the organizers and the Paris Police seem perennially unable to solve. AIN’s four editions of Paris Airshow News contained all the important defense news from the show, and the content is also available online.