Southern California used to be the undisputed king of the defence and aerospace centres – the biggest companies were based in the area – but then the Cold War ended and they left. Or so many people outside California seem to believe.

But it is a popular misconception that Los Angeles’s once thriving defence sector has ceased to exist. The industry has certainly contracted, following the waves of consolidation in the 1990s as the US came to grips with being the world’s only superpower, but the region around Los Angeles and southern California continues to be the acknowledged world leader in defence, thanks to an expertise in space technology design and development.