Jet Fuel & Geopolitics: Inside the Miramar Air Show’s Global Arms Circus

From thirty-thousand feet, the Miramar Air Show looks like the world’s most expensive light-switch rave. F/A-18 Super Hornets pirouette above San Diego’s sun-bleached suburbs, leaving contrails the color of bruised peaches, while toddlers in aviator sunglasses cheer from folding chairs that cost more than the GDP of Tuvalu. The scene is quintessentially American—equal parts county fair and imperial roll call—yet the audience this year is anything but parochial. Between the kettle-corn stands you can hear Tagalog, Farsi, and the clipped vowels of Royal Air Force officers on exchange, all drawn to California’s annual pageant of controlled combustion like moths to a JDAM flame.

Officially, the show is a recruitment tool and a “community celebration.” Unofficially, it’s a traveling arms bazaar where geopolitics is sold by the funnel cake. Delegations from Poland, the Philippines, and a discreet Gulf monarchy or two wander the tarmac taking selfies with Marine aviators whose call signs—“Maverick,” “Viper,” “Student-Loan Default”—double as LinkedIn keywords. The Poles, still high on last year’s shopping spree, nod approvingly at the new F-35B hovering like a $115 million hummingbird. Somewhere, a Lockheed lobbyist pops champagne; in Warsaw, another kindergarten is told there’s no budget for heating this winter.

The global implications are best viewed through the souvenir stand: miniature drones made in Shenzhen, keychains stamped “Peace Through Strength” in Comic Sans, and—for the discerning war tourist—a $39.99 VR headset that lets you experience an airstrike on a generic Middle Eastern village, complete with haptic feedback when the collateral damage counter hits double digits. “Authentic sound design,” boasts the box. “Captured in Dolby Atmos over Mosul.” One suspects the residents were not consulted for their review.

Meanwhile, the carbon accountants—those joyless monks of the Anthropocene—hover at the perimeter with clipboards. A single Blue Angels performance, they mutter, burns as much jet fuel as a small Pacific island nation uses in a year. Their pamphlets are aggressively ignored; nothing kills the vibe like being reminded that the same physics making the F-35 dance also makes Kiribati sink. Still, the Marines have gone green-ish: this year’s program is printed on recycled paper, and the porta-potties are allegedly carbon-neutral. Somewhere, Greta Thunberg rolls her eyes hard enough to affect Earth’s rotation.

Back on the flight line, the international observers trade notes like sommeliers of violence. The South Koreans compliment the new anti-drone lasers; the Turks ask if the lasers can be retrofitted to target “domestic irritants.” Everyone agrees the fireworks finale—simulated napalm over the Pacific—is tastefully done. A retired RAF group captain confides over warm beer that the real show happens after dark, when generals and arms reps retreat to hotel suites to haggle over spare parts like divorced parents splitting custody of the F-35’s software updates. “Peace, Inc.,” he sighs, “runs on PowerPoint and expensed shrimp.”

The crowd files out beneath a sky the color of a healing wound. Children cradle foam F-16s, already dreaming of supersonic futures. Their parents, clutching credit-card statements and earplugs, dream of cheaper futures—an oxymoron in any language. On the horizon, the last Hornet disappears toward an aircraft carrier whose annual operating budget could fund UNESCO for a decade. The world keeps spinning, albeit slightly faster from all the afterburners.

And so the Miramar Air Show ends as it began: a meticulously choreographed hymn to deterrence, wrapped in cotton candy and plausible deniability. The planes fly home, the diplomats pocket their receipts, and the Pacific swallows another sunset whole. Somewhere in the queue for the parking shuttle, a German journalist mutters that the only thing truly stealth about the F-35 is its program cost. No one laughs. We’re all too busy inhaling the jet fuel of progress.