BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
As one of the largest facilities of its kind anywhere, Arizona’s Pima Air and Space Museum displays more than 400 aircraft curated from across the history of aviation. Jets, planes, and helicopters large and small are staged across 80 acres of desert and in multiple hangars and galleries alongside hundreds of thousands of artifacts.
Like other in-the-know museums across the country, Pima Air and Space discovered the value of Defense Logistics Agency surplus and excess property decades ago. As a qualifying non-profit educator, the organization has screened and received free used and unwanted Defense Department property via DLA Disposition Services Reutilization, Transfer and Donation authority since the 1970s, according to Arizona Aerospace Foundation CEO Scott Marchand.
Marchand joined the museum in 2002 and attended a state-led donation property screener’s class the following year. He said he has personally screened former DOD and other federal property for the facility ever since, even after becoming museum and foundation director in 2015.
“Overall, we love the program,” he said. “It’s been a great benefit to us. We hope to continue using it for a long time.”
While former military items are free for non-profit donation recipients, those organizations are responsible for the costs of transportation to the equipment’s destination. Marchand said Pima Air and Space mostly scours online property listings for material handling equipment, tool kits, fabrication items and aircraft ground support items located at nearby bases. They’ll typically keep an eye out for aircraft tugs, ground support equipment, material handling equipment, fabrication equipment and specialized tool kits.
But if they see something unique, or that they really need, they aren’t afraid to request it from afar.
“It depends on what we’re looking for,” Marchand said, citing a set of commercial mobile air stairs the museum nabbed from Whiteman Air Base in Arkansas and a heavy pushback tug they retrieved from Dover Air Base in Delaware. “If it’s really important and specialized, we’ll go get it.”
About 10 years ago, Pima added High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, or Humvees, to its used property wish list and added more vehicles this year. Marchand cited the government shutdown of 2013 as the fortuitous moment the organization realized their usefulness. He said excess Humvees had typically been requisitioned by law enforcement or other RTD recipients with higher priority before the museum could screen them. But during that time, they received “a bunch” of utility vehicles and were impressed by their versatility.
“We discovered that they’re super handy, really reliable, easy to fix and repair,” Marchand said, citing the vehicles’ various uses, including converting one into a mobile tire repair locker. “We’ve been substituting them for utility vehicles that age out ever since.”
The Pima Air and Space Museum’s official mission is to create “unlimited horizons in aerospace education through the preservation and presentation of the history of flight.” The organization expressed thankfulness for access to DOD’s castoff equipment and for the work DLA personnel conduct daily to keep both warfighters and donation customers aware of what’s available.
“It would make it a lot harder to do what we do around here, given the cost of the equipment,” Marchand said, estimating that hundreds of thousands of dollars of unwanted equipment have flowed to the museum from military excess stockpiles. “It’s a huge money saver so we can put more resources into the education program.”