The White Elephant Fleet

DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. —  It is only 7 a.m., but John Nimrichter has been pulling parts from outdated military airplanes for an hour already. “These things get sizzling hot,” he says, looking up at a 1950s-era B-52 bomber sitting on the baked desert just south of Tucson. “You’ll lose your breath.”

Driving up and down endless rows of mothballed fighters, bombers, helicopters and cargo planes, Nimrichter and a crew of 63 fellow Air Force mechanics mine them for replacement parts for aircraft still in use.

Many pieces go into planes on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, a cheaper way to repair them than buying new parts. But increasingly, the salvaged parts from the Arizona installation known as “the boneyard” are keeping together aircraft the Air Force doesn’t want anymore: B-52s produced in the 1950s; cargo planes from the ‘60s; in-air refueling tankers dating to the 1950s and ‘60s.

Even as the Air Force is struggling to find money for new fighters, bombers, tankers and cargo planes, it estimates it will spend close to $1.6 billion over the next five years just to maintain aircraft it wants to jettison. It can’t get rid of them -- and free up money for new aircraft -- because often the older aircraft have been given special protections by Congress.

Air Force officials say the protections, many enacted at the behest of lawmakers whose districts might suffer if the aircraft were phased out, have become increasingly burdensome.

The Air Force would like to retire 1,033 of its 6,100 aircraft in the next five years. But more than a third of those it wants to lose must remain in service because of the protections. An additional 492 aircraft the Air Force is considering retiring in the near future are cloaked in similar protections, further limiting options.

“We are trying to retire these aircraft so the old can make way for the new,” said Brig. Gen. Charles W. Lyon, who is in charge of long-term planning for the fleet. “Currently, we’re primed to keep [some planes] which were designed initially during the Eisenhower era.”

Members of Congress who support the bans on retiring certain aircraft cite national security, arguing that the planes perform essential missions. And, they say, it makes no sense to get rid of aircraft that are still useful when the new aircraft are many years from completion.

With the echoes of last year’s base-closure fights still in the air, some Air Force officials say they suspect members of Congress are as concerned with keeping their home bases open as they are with fulfilling the needs of the Air Force.

“It becomes a special-interest project on behalf of Congress,” said Michael W. Wynne, secretary of the Air Force.

Wynne is careful to not impugn the lawmakers’ sincerity -- he thinks most legislators simply do not realize that the ban they’re pushing for is just one of many before the Air Force. But the service has begun to take its gloves off.

Both Wynne, who made the issue a priority after assuming office in November, and Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, have made repeated trips to Capitol Hill to press their case.

The reason for the sudden urgency is, in part, budgetary. Already the Air Force has agreed to cut 40,000 airmen from its active-duty rolls to find money to build new planes.

Of the aircraft it is seeking to retire, the venerable B-52 is among the most expensive to maintain. Designed in the 1950s as the cornerstone of the Strategic Air Command, the “Stratofortress” was the heavy bomber designated during the Cold War to be at the ready to drop nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, it found a second life delivering smaller and precision-guided bombs, including during the 2003 Iraq invasion.

But in 1995, the Air Force determined it no longer needed all 94 of its B-52s to complete this more limited mission. It wants to retire 38 of them by 2011, 18 of which would be mothballed this year.

But the Pentagon authorization bill that passed the House in May, like legislation from previous years, bars the Air Force from retiring any of its B-52s until 2018. (NASA will be allowed before then to get rid of the one it owns for testing purposes.)

That provision passed after intense lobbying by lawmakers from North Dakota and Louisiana, where the planes are based. They wrote to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in April to urge him to “reconsider these misguided plans for one of our nation’s greatest military assets.”

Adam Sharp, a spokesman for Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), said Landrieu and the three other senators who signed the letter to Rumsfeld -- Louisiana Republican David Vitter and North Dakota Democrats Byron L. Dorgan and Kent Conrad -- believe that the Iraq invasion proves their case: 80 B-52s were used in some capacity during the first month of combat.

The senators also argued that because the Air Force had no plan to field a new bomber until 2018 at the earliest, retiring 40% of the B-52 fleet by 2011 would lead to a “bomber shortage.”

Sharp acknowledged that the senators’ interest was tied to the B-52 bases in their states, but denied that their efforts to block retirements were directly tied to parochial interests.

“Absolutely, Louisiana and North Dakota have a significant interest in this, but we also have the most direct understanding of their capabilities,” he said.

The Air Force estimates that maintaining the unwanted B-52s costs $53.7 million each year. That does not include occasional upgrades made to communications equipment and safety features.

“You’ve got to ask yourself: Why are you upgrading airplanes that you have no intention of using” in the future? Wynne said.

The Air Force has faced a similar problem with its F-117s, the stealth fighter once so secret that its very existence was classified. Its stealth capabilities, developed in the 1970s, have aged -- one F-117 was famously shot down by Serbian air defenses in 1999 -- and it will soon be replaced by the F-22.

Despite that, for the last two years the Senate has inserted measures into annual defense bills preventing the Air Force from getting rid of any F-117s, due largely to efforts of New Mexico’s senators, Republican Pete V. Domenici and Democrat Jeff Bingaman. All 52 of the F-117s are based at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, N.M.

Matt Letourneau, a spokesman for Domenici, said the senators were concerned that a gap between the retirement of the F-117s and the ramp-up of the F-22 would leave the Air Force without a radar-evading fighter. But he also acknowledged that the base’s future was just as important a motivation for the anti-mothballing move.

This year, the delegation’s efforts have been more flexible. A Domenici-backed measure in the Senate’s defense appropriation bill would allow the Air Force to retire 10 of the F-117s, though it asks the Pentagon to reconsider its plans for the remaining planes. The change in sentiment, Letourneau acknowledged, came only after the Air Force agreed to station two F-22 squadrons at Holloman.

For the Air Force, the movement -- however slight -- on the F-117 is good news. But it also raises a troubling precedent: If congressional delegations are willing to part with aging aircraft only after new planes are delivered, the Air Force could find itself waiting awhile.

Like the B-52s, whose successors are not due until 2018, other blocked aircraft are years away from a newer model. The Pentagon still has not held a competition, for example, to determine which contractor will build the replacement for the 114 oldest of its KC-135 tankers, which it wants to scrap.

Complicating things further, planes such as the KC-135s and 143 older C-130 cargo planes -- many of which have cracks in their fuselages and are subject to flight restrictions -- are at National Guard and Reserve bases across the country, giving them strong support on Capitol Hill.

It may be an uphill battle, but the Air Force is fully aware of what might happen if it cannot get rid of the planes it no longer wants.

A decision this year to end the acquisition of new C-17 cargo planes, built in Long Beach, was made in part because Congress forced the Air Force to hold onto aging C-5s, which the C-17 was designed to replace. On Aug. 18, Boeing announced the first steps toward closing its Long Beach plant.

In addition, the number of aging planes is raising new safety concerns.

The average age of the Air Force fleet has risen from 20 years in 2000 to nearly 24 years now.

In 1967 -- during the Vietnam War -- the average Air Force plane was 8 1/2 years old.

Pentagon engineers recently consulted the Canadian and Australian air forces for data on managing aging military aircraft -- an issue familiar to the two perpetually cash-strapped allies, but less so to the United States.

But if the Air Force can’t persuade Congress to stop the flow of restrictions, it may face a future that will keep the mechanics in the Arizona desert toiling for years to come.

The crews at the boneyard -- formally known as the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center -- salvage more than 19,000 spare parts every year from the 4,022 aircraft retired to the dry heat.

As the planes grow older and older, the sources for spare parts grow fewer and fewer.

“They are basically down to mom-and-pop shops to make these parts,” said Tony Draper, who oversees the spare-parts operation at the Davis-Monthan base.

“Eventually, they’ll shut down too.”