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Avalon Airshow 2025

Mathew Herbert
Apr 11
2 min read

Since our founding it has been a Victorian UAS tradition to attend the trade day at Avalon airshow and this year was no exception.

For this event we took the largest contingent of staff ever to the Thursday trade day, some airshow veterans, others having never attended the event before.

Over the past few airshows, we have seen a majority of booths in the main halls dedicated to General Aviation with a few Drones here and there. This year it was different, a fundamental shift occurred and there was barely a stall in the halls that didn’t have a drone offering of some kind. Whether it be composite materials, services, payloads or aircraft themselves the industry is moving toward uncrewed systems in a big way.

While it was wall to wall RPA in the halls outside it was a different story. This year there were very few uncrewed systems on display, much less flying (save for the security tethered drone which stayed up for most of the show). There was also the notable absence of an Airshow veteran of global Hawk which has been attending these events for as long as I can remember. This surprised me given that most countries are increasing their uncrewed capabilities (particularly in military spheres).

I do wonder how long it will take for uncrewed systems to break the glass ceiling and be part of the flying display with things like the Ghost Bat rubbing shoulders with the F22 raptor. I suspect we will start to see these capabilities on show sooner than most imagine as the aviation industry moves further down the path to autonomy.

All staff attending took away something different from the event and made a different set of new connections.

Here are a few glimpses into their experiences....

Darren

"The surprising thing about Avalon Airshow was that every time I turned around, there was another drone. This was great for me (!), and I have been going to Airshows since the RAAF displays at Laverton. It seems to indicate a clear focus of the entire industry. No one selling Airliners, everyone’s talking Drones"