There are more than 4,000 aircraft parked here at the Boneyard.
Taken together, these planes would make up the second largest air force in the entire
world.
But most of these planes will never fly again.
They're here to serve a different purpose.
The Boneyard is where the Air Force and every other U.S. government agency sends their decommissioned
airplanes to be taken apart, reused in other aircraft, or turned over to the Defense Reutilization
and Marketing Office to be sold as scrap.
The reclamation process at Amarg is able to extract the very last tax dollars from these
aircraft after they've reached the end of their useful operational lives.
It's a mission that's been helping save taxpayers money since the end of World War II.
Shortly after the Second World War, there were huge quantities of surplus aircraft scattered
all over the world.
A lot of them were scrapped where they were in theater, depending on the types.
Other airframes were identified as having value for potential future use, or there just wasn't
enough capacity in the overseas theaters to dispose of them as required.
So a lot of them were ferried back here.
In particular, at Arizona, a lot of B-17s, B-24s, and B-25s were all located here.
The 50s was kind of a unique golden age of jet flight and propeller flight.
There was an enormous diversity of aircraft being used by the Air Force, some more successfully
than others.
So a lot of them were rapidly outclassed and made obsolete.
So entire production runs of aircraft were brought here for reclamation like F-84s, B-36s,
whereas others were brought here for storage and regeneration.
A lot of B-29s were stored here after World War II, and they were pressed back into service
for Korea.
So up until the early 60s, Amark was principally an Air Force facility.
The Navy and the Marine Corps maintained their own facility up outside Phoenix at Lichfield
Park.
But that was closed up, I think, in 1962, and all those assets transferred down here.
So since that time, this has been the complete storage facility for government aircraft.
So you find NASA aircraft over there.
You find Coast Guard aircraft, Border Patrol, Navy, Marine, Reserve units, training units.
We have a lot of unique airframes here, a lot of one-of-a-kinds or a few-of-a-kinds.
Behind us here, there's a B-36 Peacemaker.
It's special.
It is the last production one ever built by Convair.
It came off the assembly line in 1958, flew for two years, retired out in Fort Worth.
It's one of only four existing airframes out of nearly 400 built.
And one of my personal favorites is the Boeing B-52A Stratofortress.
It's the oldest buff in existence, serial number three, third one off the production
line.
It was the principal test airframe and carrier mothership for the X-15 program.
So nearly all of the early Gemini, Mercury, and Apollo astronauts all dropped off of our
B-52A in the X-15 program.
The recently deceased Neil Armstrong was a participant of that program and dropped off
our airplane.
So it's, the way I see it, it's kind of reeking in history.
I really love it.
As the Air Force has evolved, so has the Boneyard.
During the Cold War, America's determination to outpace the Soviet Union in the space race
helped fuel an explosion of technological advancement.
Almost as quickly as they were introduced, U.S. military aircraft were regularly phased
out as newer aircraft flew faster, higher, and farther.
The out-motored airplanes were sent here, and the Boneyard's inventory began to swell.
The Vietnam War came a renewed call for even more advanced bombers and fighters.
By the time that war started to wind down in 1973, the Boneyard's fleet had reached
an all-time high of more than 6,000 aircraft.
Today, some 4,000 aircraft still sit in the Boneyard, in various stages of the reclamation
process.
But the inventory here, much like in today's Air Force, is destined to change.
You know, as our Air Force becomes more and more technologically reliant, fewer and
fewer different types of airframes are being produced.
I would expect probably in 20 or 25 years, you'd probably see less than 1,000 aircraft
over there, and looking out 40 years, there may not be a need for such a large facility.
There will always be a need for the facility, but whether or not you're going to find fleets
of KC-135s or fields of F-15s, probably not.
You know, there's 200-some-odd F-22s, the F-35 hasn't even really come into full operational
service yet, so I wouldn't expect to see any of them even twinkling at retirement for
35 or 40 years, but there are probably several hundred of them, so it's not going to be the
same vast, diverse fleet that you see now, so it is kind of the end of a golden age.
Over the course of its more than 60-year history here in the American Southwest, AMARC has
become something of an aviation enthusiast's mecca.
Wherever you go in the world, anybody who kind of is interested in aviation or airplanes
at all, if you mention Tucson, you know, they're always like, oh, that's where the boneyards
are, right?
Yeah, that's where the boneyards are.
And the boneyards are here for a very good reason.
Turns out the desert climate here in Tucson provides an ideal environment for long-term
storage of these aircraft, with very little risk of corrosion or other damage from the
elements.
So what we're on here is fairly unique.
It's a very high calcium soil, very stable, and when it's dry as it is now, it's as hard
as concrete and very, very, very robust.
And with the dry weather conditions here, low relative humidity year-round, very low
rainfall, averaging about six to eight inches a year in the region.
There's nothing like tornadoes or hurricanes or that type of thing here to potentially
destroy assets, so Tucson was identified as an ideal location for an active reclamation
facility.
And that year-round sunshine also makes this an ideal location for people to come visit
and experience Air Force history in person.
Normally, when someone wants to get a good look at some military aircraft, they have
to do it through binoculars.
But here at the boneyard, you can get up close and personal with everything from fighters,
bombers, tankers, lifters, just about everything the Air Force has flown in the last half-century.
Our visitors almost universally enjoy the sense of adventure they feel coming out here in the
desert to look at airplanes.
We don't rope off our airplanes outside.
People are free to get up and stick their head in the wheel well, bump their heads on
a propeller, trip over a tie-down cable, run from rattlesnakes, you know, it's the authentic
desert experience out here.
And it's a big part of our charm and our appeal.
One of our sort of taglines is, you know, where you can touch history and we, you know,
we embrace that.
So it's not all just about tearing down old aircraft as newer technology makes them obsolete.
Preserving Air Force history has become like a secondary mission at the boneyard.
Along with the Pima Air and Space Museum right across the street, AMARG serves as a sort
of monument to the accomplishments and innovations of the past, hoping to inspire America's future
pilots, aircraft engineers and astronauts.
You know, our next generation of aerospace innovators, for all you know, could be wandering
around here this weekend getting that whiff of hydraulic fluid.
If we can expose and encourage young people to come out and challenge themselves and find
a direction through what we do here, however little, I think it's important work.
Time and technology march on.
The boneyard will continue in its mission, taking custody of outdated aircraft, salvaging
and reusing every part possible.
But except for the small handful of aircraft that are preserved for posterity, once a certain
model of jet fighter or helicopter or long range bomber is gone, it's gone forever.
A common misconception that a lot of people have with AMARG is that there's still World
War II aircraft over there.
You know, more often than you think, we do get emails or phone calls from people doing
family history or have heard legends through one of their uncles or cousins that, oh yeah,
there's a boneyard out in Arizona that's got all these World War II aircraft out there.
So they call wondering if their grandfather's B-24 is still parked across the street there.
And we have to generally explain to them, no, I'm afraid not.
I mean, it was turned into beer cans probably 60 years ago.
So the idea that a lot of people have is that the boneyard is really a boneyard, like a
graveyard where it's like it's a very static kind of place where nothing happens.
It's just a big, you know, I don't know, like some hillbilly farm in the middle of Texas
with 400 old tractors laying there.
It's anything but, as you may have seen, it's a very heavily engaged, dynamic, uh,
busy, busy organization that's tasked with supporting, you know, the mission of the United
States Air Force and its allies, and that's a huge amount of work.
For Today's Air Force, from Tucson, Arizona, I'm Tech Sergeant Nicholas Kurtz.
