The 2017 airshow season is starting, and this editor is already on the road. I am in California, where I will attend the China Lake Air Show on March 18 and 19 and the Los Angeles County Airshow at Fox Field, Lancaster on March 25 and 26. In mid-June I will be with my colleagues at the Paris Air Show, where we will produce and distribute four printed copies of AIN Paris Airshow News. In mid-July the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT)—the world’s largest military airshow—beckons at Fairford airbase in the UK.
The China Lake event is a rare opportunity to witness the work of the Naval Air Weapons Center (NAWC) in static displays. But like most airshows on American military bases, there won’t be much flying by operational aircraft. The Pentagon prefers to fund—handsomely—some dedicated military aerial demonstration teams and let the operational squadrons concentrate on the "sharp" end of the business. But this does create space for a variety of innovative and entertaining civilian airshow acts.
Chris Pocock has been covering the defense beat for AIN for over 30 years. He is a British citizen and a graduate of the University of Cambridge. Chris worked in the air cargo business for ten years before becoming a full-time writer in 1983. He subsequently edited two air cargo journals before becoming AIN’s Defense Editor. He retired from that position in 2018, but still contributes to the publication. Chris has written extensively on aerial reconnaissance, including four books on the history of the U-2 spyplane. He also lectures on this and other topics related to intelligence-gathering in the Cold War.
