One of the options when visiting the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, is touring The Boneyard.
AMARC, or the Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Center, is a joint service facility managed by the US Air Force Material Command located in the town of Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Often referred to as ‘The Boneyard’, AMARC is an aerospace storage and maintenance facility adjoining Davis-Monthan Air Force Base which provides a service to all branches of the US military (Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard and Army), as well as other national agencies.
The tour is a bus ride through the AMARC facility and it was quite interesting. Here are some of the pictures I took from inside the bus (you are not allowed off the bus).
Some airplanes are just being stored and could be called back in to use at any time. Others are available to sell to allies. And then there’s the section of The Boneyard where planes are kept only for their parts. Once that particular model is no longer being used by us and no longer in use by any of our allies, then the planes can be dismantled and sold for scrap/parts or put out to bid for scrap. Some of taken apart simply because an unfriendly country has begun to use that particular model and we do not wish for that model’s parts to become available to our enemy. Scraping them ensures the parts do not end up on the black market.
It was an interesting tour. If you are at all interesting in planes and the military and aviation history, this is definitely a tour you will want to experience.