Crazy! Take a look for yourself

[mcflan]

Before you go to the link, I apologize if someone has posted this in another thread. But this baffled me. Especially when you consider that it costs $14.6-$18.8 million per F-16 depending on the outfit. I know that stuff has to be decommissioned after a set amount of years in service...But the shear amount of waste involved with the "Aircraft Boneyard" baffles me. Can't we reuse some of this stuff? I imagine that we do reuse a considerable amount...But what determines the length of service/life of service for our aircraft in the military? One would think at the least you could recycle the materials or melt them down and reprocess them for new material? I knew this place existed, but I had no idea of the shear size of it. If one of our military members could enlighten me that would be awesome. It just seems like a TON of waste. Another thing that blows my mind is how close you can zoom up on the airfield

Google Maps

[Chiller]

From what i watched history/discover channel. Some airplanes are protected and save in case of emergency...kinda like keeping that old truck if you ever need it. Other planes are slowly recycled, metals, engines...ect. Others are used as target practice. Dont quote me this is just what i gathered. Also the commercial plane indusrty follows the same lines. Stuff just gets recycled after a period of time. Sometimes they will take passenger planes and outfit them to be used to fight forest fires. or other jobs.

I think your answers can be found herehttp://www.amarcexperience.com/AMARCDescription.asp

Hope this helps!