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\u201cA period of extraordinary opportunity\u201d read the shiny words of Gareth Rogers, chief executive of Farnborough International, in the official guide to the 2026 arms-trade airshow.<\/p>\n
Rogers was in an upbeat mood. He rather breathlessly described the arms-trade event responding to \u2018unprecedented demand\u2019 and \u2018new opportunities\u2019.\u00a0 The British government, the words in the shiny brochure read, saw in the airshow as \u2018one of the key cultural events in leveraging the UK\u2019s cultural, history and excellence\u2019.<\/p>\n
Defence diplomacy, it declared, was a \u2018whole-of-society\u2019 effort (this author didn\u2019t see one Asian or Black British woman in the entire show, but let\u2019s leave this for another time).<\/p>\n
What was of note was the language in this place of bombs and missiles and fighter jets and drones.<\/p>\n
At Farnborough, the weapons and their delivery systems were rarely presented as instruments designed to destroy buildings, rupture bodies or to end lives. Instead they were presented as \u201ccapabilities\u201d, as \u201csolutions\u201d and as \u201cplatforms\u201d.<\/p>\n
Missiles offered precision. Surveillance systems offered awareness. Artificial intelligence offered accelerated decision-making. Military expansion offered prosperity.<\/p>\n
There was not a drop of blood visible in the whole show.<\/p>\n
As such, it is hard not to have come to this conclusion: that the measured intention of such bland vocabulary was not merely to sell weapons. It was to separate the products on sale here from their consequences.<\/p>\n
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Outside the show\u2019s barbed-wire perimeter, campaigners challenged that separation. Kirsten Bayes from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade sighed and then, without hope of much of an answer, asked: \u2018what is it about us that we earn so much money for selling these deadly weapons and for so many this is acceptable?\u2019<\/p>\n
Inside no such questions were asked. The trade was, like the hand gel offered at some pavilion entrances, heavily sanitised.<\/p>\n
There was no mention of Gaza. No mention of Lebanon. No mention of Iran.<\/p>\n
This despite the fact that, globally, AOAV recorded some 5,009 air-launched attacks in 2025, causing 30,369 casualties. Civilians accounted for 93 per cent of those recorded killed or injured. State forces carried out 98 per cent of the attacks, while Israel was responsible for the greatest share of recorded civilian harm. Israel\u2019s presence here was in the form of three companies \u2013 Elbit, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael \u2013 none of them offered us an interview.<\/p>\n
Instead they promoted their products beneath polished lights and logos. Their displays were not accompanied by images of bombed apartment blocks, hospital wards or bereaved families.<\/p>\n
The British government embraced the same framing. The new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has gone on social media declaring his government intends to \u2018reindustralise this nation and create the jobs and opportunities people desperately want to see\u2019. He praises the \u201cbrilliant\u201d businesses at Farnborough and claims they support half a million jobs (it\u2019s never clear how such numbers are crunched).<\/p>\n
There is never any accompanying discussion of the human cost of such weapons.<\/p>\n
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Instead, the language of economics provides moral insulation. The industry is presented through the lens of employment, investment, exports and industrial strategy.<\/p>\n
Weapons become mere engines of regional renewal. Missile production become the route to skilled manufacturing.<\/p>\n
The dead are edited out of the moral balance sheet. And all of this is made palatable by the slogans on display.<\/p>\n
\u2018Stronger Together. Mission ready\u2019 was one blandishment.<\/p>\n
\u2018Getting Further and Faster\u2019 was another.<\/p>\n
\u2018Advancing the Future Together\u2019 appeared alongside \u2018We\u2019re all on a journey\u2019.<\/p>\n
Nammo promised that it was \u2018Securing the Future\u2019.<\/p>\n
Kongsberg promoted its NSM-JSM missiles, designed for \u201cprecision\u201d strikes at sea and on land, while claiming to be \u2018Protechting people and planet\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018Technology for a safer future\u2019 was the promise from Leonardo.<\/p>\n
These phrases place weapons within the vocabulary of public service and collective progress. It\u2019s Orwellian. Destruction becomes protection. Military readiness becomes security. Military-industrial expansion becomes a shared journey.<\/p>\n
Everywhere is the word \u201cprecision\u201d. It reassures the buyers that the Pandoras box of violence they are buying can be controlled and contained. That you can ascribe the notion of accuracy to 500 metre wide blast effects.<\/p>\n
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Precision, however, was here presented as a technical characteristic; it is not a legal outcome rooted in International Humanitarian Law.<\/p>\n
A munition may strike at exactly its intended coordinates but it\u2019s 500lb weight will still kill civilians. Blast and fragmentation show no respect to the technical boundaries dreamt up by advertising departments.<\/p>\n
So it is that here, at a defence exhibition, responsibility is distanced and exiled. No company here comments on civilian casualties. No minister ever says that the aftermath of the weapons sold on UK soil will one day be on the news in the form of ruined homes.<\/p>\n
Trauma, amputations, grief are all absent in these commercial halls.<\/p>\n
Instead they deploy a vocabulary that makes violence remote. That allows ministers to celebrate exports without discussing end users.<\/p>\n
Amid the euphemism, the only glimpse of honesty came from the fuselage of Embraer\u2019s E195-E2 aircraft. It was emblazoned with the name \u2018Profit-Hunter\u2019.<\/p>\n
But that was the only slogan that came close to honesty.<\/p>\n
So it was that here at Farnborough, almost everything was on display, except the human consequences of what was being sold.<\/p>\n