Posted on 02/18/2019 2:07:54 PM PST by jazusamo
TUCSON, Ariz. -- It's nicknamed the Boneyard. It sits on 2,600 acres of desert land, with more than 3,000 military aircraft on the Air Force’s Davis-Monthan Base. It's more than a retirement home for planes from all four branches of the military, NASA, and the U.S. Forest Service. It's a sort of memorial with multiple uses. Many of the planes are scrapped for parts and some completely refurbished.
The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) is the only place in the country authorized to store military-grade planes.
“We’re looked at as a national air power reservoir…How do you make sure that what you’re keeping there is what’s of value to the service,” said Col. Jennifer Barnard, commander of the 309th AMARG. “So, there’s a really rigorous process by which it’s determined the assets should be stored here and what needs to come out of here, as well.”
The staff at AMARG call themselves the “boneyard wranglers.” There’s just under 700 of them on base and Barnard is in charge of the whole operation, which includes demilitarizing and recycling, along with restoring the fighter jets, planes, and helicopters.
“There’s so much great use that happens,” Barnard said. “Because we’re behind a fence and we’re an active military installation...people perceive there to be a great amount of mystery about what happens here. Getting to be the commander of this place, I see there’s a lot of amazing things that happen here. We’re able to reutilize as many assets as possible out of here and nothing goes to waste.”
Some of the aircraft are reclaimed and refurbished as part of projects for the U.S. military or are sent abroad — then are sent back ready to fly again.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Yep, Mrs. jaz had a cousin that lived in Vallejo for years and the navy had a ghost fleet at Benicia (SF Bay area) though it wasn’t huge.
Don’t know if it’s still there.
Yup. Still there, just a handful of not interesting ships.
Exactly, and think of the numbers of them it took to fly and keep that many aircraft flying.
My husband’s favorite place : ) (Pima Air Museum and The Boneyard)
Ive been there. Its huge.
Toward the end of WW2 we were doing 1000 plane bombing missions over Germany.Imagine the logistics on that.
LOL!
But the tips would be great.
Their website w/ lotsa pics and clips:
https://www.airplaneboneyards.com/davis-monthan-afb-amarg-airplane-boneyard.htm
My Christmas list this year goes like this...
One B-52. In good condition.
One ground crew.
One air crew. Preferably not older than 65.
One boat load of JP8.
One full ordinance package.
One M Kehoe on nav and weps.
5.56mm
There’s a current push to use new electronics with autonomous software to make a sizeable number of retired airframes there into arms-carrying drones.
LOL! You’re ambitious, my FRiend and have a hunch you’d make things better. :^)
Better than all the trillions pissed away on welfare.This created jobs and industries which helped make this country the super power that it is.That being said IKE was right.Beware the military industrial complex.
That looks like the WW1 4 stackers we gave to the brits for rights to build airfields on english soil for WW2.
I agree, and don’t get me wrong cuz I wasn’t complaining. :^)
Thank you, FRiend. “combatant commander of U.S. Pacific Command” How amusing, an air force guy commanding the fleet. I always suspected he was working for/at the same company I referenced in my comment, one way or another.
:>)
I forgot, there was a whole lot of politics going on with the Boeing deal. Thank you.
Major T. J. “King” Kong: Survival kit contents check. In them you’ll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days’ concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff
Agreed. You can't get the same perspective on the ground -- it's just too big.
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