Bitaon Air Force is a magazine for Israeli aviation issues published every two months, and is the official magazine of the Israeli Air Force. The Bitaon is a military unit of the Air Force.
The reporters, photographers and graphic artists are soldiers on active duty, and some of the editors are civilian employees of the IDF who previously worked in various communication systems. The Bitaon reporters are also in charge of updating Air Force news on the Air Force's website.
The magazine was founded on September 1948. With the advancement of printing technologies, more and more color pages were introduced into the newspaper, until at the beginning of the nineties the newspaper became fully colored. The Bitaon is printed on chromo pages (photo paper) and includes articles about the Air Force, news items about what is happening in Israel and abroad on aviation issues, a historical section, a readers' questions section and more.
Despite being a military body, the Bitaon is run as a closed independent economy. In 1991, when the new Chief of Staff Ehud Barak asked to close all the military battalions, the Air Force Town was one of the three battalions that continued to be published (the other two were "Ba Camp" and "Systems"), partly due to the fact that it supported itself financially and not was a burden on the Ministry of Defense's budget. In Town, the Air Force still manages to cover its expensive production costs and find a positive financial balance.