AMARG boneyard and Pima Air & Space Museum

AMARG military plane 'boneyard' & Pima Air & Space Museum - darkometer rating : 4 - On the one hand, a vast sea of old planes parked in the Arizona desert, all decommissioned and/or mothballed or even being gutted and dismantled – hence the informal designation 'boneyard'. It's a unique type of encounter with the USA 's Air Force superpower status. A more conventional encounter is the Pima Air & Space Museum next door, which features a wide range of all manner of aircraft in more or less good shape, including some real biggies such as strategic bombers, amongst them three (!!) B-52s . > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: AMARG stands for "Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group" … formerly known as " ~ Center" (hence AMARC – and you can still find it referenced under that slightly different acronym). It's a facility where the US Air Force stores and guts decommissioned military aircraft and other objects, such as missiles. The "309 Group" in Tucson, Arizona, as the division's official designation goes, is the largest such place by far in the USA (if not the whole world). It's not only old planes past their service life, even fairly new ones can end up here, but the bulk of the countless strategic bombers parked here were taken out of service in accordance with arms reduction commitments achieved in particular towards and after the end of the Cold War (e.g. START ). So a pretty large proportion of the planes put here are B-52s as well as quite a few more recent B-1s … though some of the latter may actually be brought back into service. The bombers are at least equalled in number by all those mid-air tanker planes that are so crucial to maintaining a global striking capacity too.