by Gary O'Neill

Created on: January 11, 2009

The F-14, made famous in the mid 1980s by the movie "Top Gun," was an awesome sight and a fantastic aircraft. But, time and technology made the aircraft obsolete. The US Navy made the correct, but painful decision to retire the aircraft and replace it with the more capable F-18E/F aircraft. When military aircraft are removed from active service, there are really only two options: hold the aircraft in reserve for potential later use or 'demilitarize' the aircraft and recover the valuable material.

Holding onto the aircraft in reserve for later use isn't as simple as parking the aircraft in the 'boneyard,' which is a base in Arizona that serves as the final resting place of military aircraft. Once the aircraft are there, if the intent is to re-use them, they must be cared for; this can cost quite a bit of money over a long stretch, and the military has other priorities. Bringing an aircraft like the Tomcat back into service after a long delay can turn into a real nightmare: there are no parts to support the aircraft, the technical expertise is much diluted, and those that fly the aircraft have gotten older. Despite what you see in the movies, this really is more trouble than it's worth. As for selling the aircraft to another country for its use, if the US military can't afford to operate the aircraft, who could? Would you want to buy an aircraft that is 30 years old and obsolete to defend your country?

Thus the intelligent option is to demilitarize the aircraft and recover the materials it contains. In particular, there is an enormous amount of titanium in each F-14's wing structure. Recovering the titanium alone is well worth the cost paid to the contractor. In addition, there are thousands of pounds of aluminum and hundreds of pounds of copper in each aircraft. If we are to 'reduce, reuse, recycle' our household goods, why shouldn't the military do the same?
It is quite easy to react to the perceived high cost of the contractor hired to do the recycling of the aircraft. But facts are stubborn things. If we had government employees take the aircraft apart, the man-hours and equipment required to do the job would certainly be nearly as much. If you think about the disassembly of an aircraft to recover valuable items, it's really like 'unbuilding' the aircraft. It will take a large effort to do so; If it took $20 million to build the jet in the first place, spending $900 thousand to disassemble it doesn't seem to be wildly out of balance.

Having the government hire a contractor to strip the F-14s and re use the material for other things may at first seem like another example of wildly wasteful spending, but it is not. It would be less responsible and less beneficial to the military to let the aircraft just sit in the desert and do nothing.

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