The AMARC, Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Center, is the combination bone yard, and salvage operation for the armed forces.  It's the place where all the old planes and helicopters go when the DoD is done with them.  Sometimes the planes get parted out, and sometimes the planes get reinstated.  To date, about 20% of the planes that check in do check out again.

There are about 5000 planes parked there now on 2600 acres.  There is also a desk where you can buy the equipment that is decommissioned.  Apparently many countries come here to buy equipment for their armed forces or civilian air services.

The tour of the AMARC is done via bus.  You can't walk around.  So I kept hopping from one side of the bus to the other taking as many pictures as I could.  I don't think the pictures properly convey the scale of the operation.  It was just immense.

Here is a small sample of some of the things that I saw.

This is a typical row of fighters at AMARC.  The white covering is a spray on material that is the painted white to preserve the planes.  The material is called spray lat, and it's changed every six months.

This is a signal plane from the 1950s.  Inside the dish shaped object is an antenna that spins.  Various signal capture and processing equipment is carried aloft to listen to satellite, pager, and cell phone signals.  Of course back when this plane was initially commissioned, there really wasn't any cell phone service.

Helicopters abound by the hundreds.  You see many rows of them in all shapes and sizes. 

Logistics was and is a big deal in the air force.  Many planes are used for various types of freight hauling.  These transports are some of the smaller variety, but there are hundreds of them parked all over the place.

This new arrival was in the process of being delivered as we went by.  A Coast Guard transport with it's spiffy guard paint job.

It's very difficult to capture the scale of this place.  But a field full of large planes starts to convey the scale.  Here are a number of bombers and transports that look like they are waiting to be decommissioned.

This is the last vestige of the cold war ICBM missile program.  These are Titan rockets in the process of being decommissioned and then cut up for scrap.  There are 39 left.  The process is done out in the open so the Soviet satellites can see that we are complying with the agreement.

As planes go through the process of being scrapped out, they get highly valuable items like engines and aeronautics removed.  The last step of the process is the cutting up of the airframe itself.  Sometimes the airframes are used for target practice.  All the target dummies that are used for practice and demonstration purposes come from AMARC.

The B-52's have a special status among all the planes.  The old ones are actually parted out quite a bit since the B-52 is going to be around for another 50 years.