What do we do with our stealth aircraft after we’re through with them?

In 2008, the Pentagon sent the first operational stealth combat jet, the F-117A Nighthawk, out to pasture — or at least, sort of. The F-117 flew as an entirely classified program for years before ever being acknowledged by the U.S. Air Force as an operational program in the 1980s, allowing a generation of young Americans to grow up under the vague awareness that the United States had some kind of secret hidden in the clouds above our heads. Then, when the the Nighthawk (or its inaccurate 90’s nickname of “stealth fighter”) was formally unveiled to the public, its angular design was so out of this world that it somehow managed to exceed expectations. Stealth, America came to understand, was the combat science of the future.

Now, here we are, ten years after the F-117 left active service and the term “stealth” has grown to encompass a wide variety of capabilities and materials, ranging from engines designed to reduce infrared exhaust signatures to radar absorbent coatings applied to notable un-stealthy platforms like the F/A-18 Super Hornet. At its heart, however, stealth remains primarily a product of aircraft design: marrying the angular shape of the F-117 with aerodynamic necessities for capable bomber and fighter platforms in new and increasingly advanced ways in the interest of beating (or at least delaying) detection from the latest generation of anti-aircraft weapon systems cropping up around the globe.

Stealth technology, while once as American as apple pie, has found its way into the stables of national competitors like China and Russia, though defense experts agree in large part that neither of these nations have mastered the construction processes necessary to match America’s detection evading capabilities. American remains the global leader in stealth, but that begs the question — what do we do with the stealth planes we’re finished with?