The Secret Weapon for Saving Old Warplanes

It's been a tough year or so for Air Force maintainers. High-profile aircraft failures plagued the service recently, including emergency landings of C-5 cargo aircraft, the grounding of the B-1 bomber fleet, and the loss of a C-130 propeller in mid-flight. The immediate causes of these accidents vary, the but root cause is the same: age. The average age of an Air Force aircraft is 28 years, and many planes are significantly older. Crews fly still fly the B-52 bomber, after all, with its average age of 56.