Thunderbirds at 70: How Britain Turns Fighter Jets into Flying Apology Cards

Thunderbirds, or as most of the planet now calls them, “the flying ambulance that lands on your Instagram feed,” have become the rare military export that nobody minds receiving. Picture a scarlet jet screaming over a refugee camp in Jordan, dropping nothing more lethal than colored smoke and a promise that someone, somewhere, still has the budget for dramatic flourishes. The Royal Air Force’s Aerobatic Team turns seventy this year, and like any septuagenarian with a pension and a penchant for leather, it’s touring the world reminding former colonies who once owned the sky.

The itinerary reads like a geopolitical guilt trip: Bahrain, Saudi, India, Malaysia—every stop a former British footprint now repackaged as “defense diplomacy.” When the nine Hawk T1s loop-the-loop above Mumbai, Indian Twitter briefly forgets colonial famines to marvel at synchronized nationalism. The same happens in Warsaw, where Poles cheer the Union Jack on a tailfin while simultaneously buying American LNG to keep warm. Soft power, it turns out, is most effective when it’s loud, photogenic, and leaves vapor trails spelling “sorry about the empire.”

Meanwhile, China’s August 1st team and Russia’s Swifts trade contrails in the same skies, performing the aerial equivalent of a LinkedIn flex. Nobody is fooled: the Thunderbirds’ American cousins (yes, the U.S. also nicked the name) roared over Seoul last month in an F-16 formation funded by a Pentagon coffee budget larger than most GDPs. Each barrel roll is thus a gentle reminder that global security is basically a talent show run by defense contractors. The winner gets to sell spare parts for the next three decades.

The carbon footprint? Oh, that. A single 20-minute display burns roughly what a Malian village uses in a year, but the brochures offset it with glossy photos of smiling schoolchildren waving plastic Union Jacks made in Guangzhou. The RAF insists the fuel is “sustainably sourced,” a phrase that here means “we paid an extra invoice and slept better.” Greta Thunberg retweeted a photo of the red, white, and blue smoke with the caption “blah blah blah” and still got ratioed by aviation enthusiasts posting slow-motion loops set to dubstep.

Humanitarian optics aside, the Thunderbirds’ real cargo is nostalgia. In Singapore, elderly uncles recall the 1970s flypast when Britain still had a naval base and their passports didn’t require visas to enter London. Younger spectators livestream the show on TikTok, overlaying it with captions like “POV: colonialism but make it aesthetic.” The algorithm, ever impartial, serves both demographics the same ad for Rolls-Royce jet engines. Somewhere in Whitehall, a strategist updates a PowerPoint slide titled “Influence without occupation,” then books another five-star hotel for the next arms fair.

The darker punchline sits in a hangar back at RAF Scampton: the same pilots who twirled above Buckingham Palace last June spent autumn practicing over Iraq, refueling Reapers that don’t do encores. One week you’re carving hearts in the sky for a royal wedding, the next you’re loitering at 20,000 feet waiting for a green light to ruin somebody’s wedding entirely. The transition is seamless; the uniforms even match.

So as the team heads to Latin America next—Chile, Brazil, possibly a surprise stop in the Falklands because irony is jet-propelled—remember what you’re applauding: a perfectly choreographed metaphor for the post-war order. Bright colors, loud noises, and the quiet understanding that the same engines can drop aid or ordnance depending on the paperwork. It’s a hell of a show. Just don’t inhale the smoke; it’s imported nostalgia, and the side effects are imperial.