The United States military stores more than 4,000 aircraft in the Arizona desert at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) facility adjacent to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Known as the “Boneyard,” this facility is much more than a place where aerospace vehicles come to die. Here some aircraft are maintained in both short- and long-term storage, while others serve as a “parts inventory on the wing” holding valuable spare parts in known locations ready to be harvested, overhauled, and returned to the fleet when needed. When an aircraft has yielded all the parts necessary to keep its brethren in the air, its carcass eventually meets the scrapper’s torch.
AMARG’s storage rows are home to massive fleets of F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 fighters, aerial refuelling tankers, C-130 and C-5 transports, helicopters of varying sizes, and bombers from the frontline B-1 to B-52s that are much older than the pilots flying them around the globe today. Among the rows are special use aircraft including the AWACS, P-3 maritime patrol bombers, aeromedical evacuation aircraft, and reconnaissance planes that serve a variety of missions, along with celebrity aircraft such as MiG killers that dominated the skies in aerial combat. As well as bringing the reader up to date with recent activities at AMARG, including the intake of new aircraft types, regeneration and the return to the fleet of aircraft formerly in storage, this book presents new, never-before-seen images that provide a visual tour of the Boneyard.