- The concept of a warplane “boneyard,” where old planes go after they retire, is definitely pretty rare.
- While the Pentagon maintains the world’s largest boneyard, the concept is comparatively unknown to other countries.
- Most countries fly planes until they aren’t any longer useful, but America’s 4 air forces retire planes which can be still useful on a regular basis.
The “boneyard” is a macabre term that has come to face for places—which can be normally dry and dusty—where airplanes are sent to attend. Sometimes, the planes are waiting to fly again; sometimes the planes are waiting to go to the scrapyard. But by and huge, the military aircraft boneyard is an American phenomenon, through which a mix of geography and the world’s largest air force creates a stable supply of planes that the U.S. government isn’t quite sure what to do with. Here’s all the things you want to find out about them.
End of Life
Military aircraft have various lifespans. In wartime, the lifetime of a fighter, bomber, or transport plane could possibly be measured in minutes, as attrition grinds down a fighting air force. Warplanes have all the time been semi-disposable assets in wartime; until as recently as Vietnam, air armies have fully expected to lose planes in combat.
Peacetime is a special story. The usage of steel and aluminum over wood and fabric dramatically increased the service lifetime of warplanes, to the purpose that nearly all eventually develop into technologically obsolete long before they develop into worn out by the stresses of flight operations. The typical U.S. Air Force aircraft is about 30 years old, and the service must contend with eight fleets over the age of fifty.
All of because of this warplanes can last for a long time, after which remain structurally viable for several a long time more. Entire fleets of airplanes have received mid-life updates designed to extend their service lives: the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is receiving the vital Block III upgrade, the A-10 Warthog fleet received recent wings, and the F-16 Fighting Falcon is within the technique of getting a radar makeover. The potential for upgrades, combined with plane fleets that keep flying for a long time or more, make it worthwhile to maintain old planes around …for slightly while, anyway.
Wealthy Country Problems
The U.S. military, including the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army, currently operates about 13,000 aircraft of all sorts. This runs a broad gamut from fighter jets just like the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II to planes just like the C-17 transport and Guardrail intelligence-gathering aircraft. The worldwide fleet is adding and subtracting planes every single day. Some aircraft are cut because they’re worn out, others succumb to budget cuts. All are still useful as scrap, but many are slightly more useful than that, starting from still being flyable to having useful parts, equivalent to ejection seats, that may still be harvested from an unflyable plane.
Since World War II, the U.S. military has used the southwestern desert to maintain planes in a post-retirement holding pattern. At Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, 1000’s of aircraft sit awaiting their eventual fate. The shortage of rainfall and humidity slows their deterioration in the outside, making recovering parts and equipment a long time after retirement a viable proposition. Some planes eventually re-enter service: in 2021 the B-52H bomber “Sensible Guy” rejoined America’s bomber fleet after a lengthy refurbishment, though it could have had a scorpion or two hiding within the wheel wells.
The underside line is, the USA is a wealthy enough country to avoid cutting up planes for scrap value as soon as they leave service, correctly keeping them around just in case.
The Remainder of the World
Other countries, even NATO allies, have relatively few aircraft and retire planes in much smaller numbers. The UK, for instance, has only 142 fighter jets, while France has 266, and Germany has 209. These fleets are relatively small, grow slowly, and planes are retired infrequently. These countries also lack the arid conditions to store jets in good condition. In Europe, the closest thing to a boneyard is the private fighter jet collection of vintner Michel Pont.
Russia has the capability to store warbirds, but many of the fleet was likely cut up for scrap through the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s. One location with military aircraft is the Central Aviation Museum outside of Moscow. Other than the same old Mikoyan-Gurevich and Sukhoi jets, the museum hosts a Tu-22 “Backfire” bomber, Mi-26 “Halo” heavy lift helicopters, a Mil V-12 twin-rotor superheavy helicopter, Yak-28 “Brewer” attack jets, and no less than one intact Yak-38 “Forger” vertical takeoff and landing fighter. Zhukovsky International Airport is one other location with a mixture of well-known and not-so-well-known aircraft, including the experimental Sukhoi Su-47 Berkut (“Golden Eagle”) swept-wing fighter and the MiG 1.44 prototype fighter.
China’s air forces, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and People’s Liberation Army Navy Air Force, have undergone rapid expansion over the past twenty years. China is thought to have held onto large numbers of J-6 fighters, and there are suggestions the planes are being modified to act as unmanned aerial vehicles. There’s the China Aviation Museum north of Beijing with a modest collection of Twentieth-century Chinese warplanes. China doesn’t appear to have an official boneyard of Chinese air power, but when it exists it might be in the recent, dry, Xinjiang province.