Laser-additive manufacturing technology is a rapidly developing key technology for the today's developed countries and pave a new technological way for the design and manufacture of high-performance metallic aerospace components. Metallic aerospace components have the characteristics of lightweight, difficult-to-process and high-performance, which poses significant challenges to the material design, structural optimization, process control, performance, and application evaluation of laser additive manufacturing. In this study, three categories of metallic materials typically applied in aerospace fields (i.e., Al-, Ti-, and Ni-based alloys and their metal matrix composites) and four kinds of typical structures (i.e., large-scale metal structure, complex integrated structure, lightweight lattice structure, and multi-functional bionic structure) are introduced. The recent research progress of laser additive manufacturing, both at home and abroad, in terms of new material preparation, new structure design, structure and performance control of laser additive manufacturing, high-performance/multi-functional components manufacturing, and aerospace applications, is presented. The coordination mechanisms of macro/micro cross-scale structure and performance control in laser additive manufacturing of high-performance metallic components are proposed. Furthermore, future research and development strategies of laser additive manufacturing technology in the direction of material-structure-process-performance integration are suggested.