by JOSEPH TREVITHICK

The Air Force is working to get a B-52 bomber back into service after it sat collecting dust for seven years at the famous Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.

On Feb. 13, the B-52H—with the serial number 61–0007—left the desert for its new home with the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. This is the first time the Air Force has “regenerated” one of these bombers from the Boneyard back to active duty.

Here’s another fascinating statistic. The “61” in the refurbished bomber’s serial number is short for … 1961. The bomber can—amazingly—still fly decades later, after some necessary maintenance work.

At the same time, the flying branch is looking at giving its 76 long-range B-52s all new engines—to help keep the venerable warplanes fit to fight for several more decades.

The restored bomber—which had the nickname Ghost Rider before the Air Force retired it—will replace another B-52H that suffered an accident at Barksdale.

In January 2014, “a fire … during maintenance caused significant damage to the upper forward crew compartment” of the previous aircraft, a 2nd Bomb Wing public affairs officer told War Is Boring. “The aircraft was not destroyed, but the damage received proved to be above the prohibitive cost of maintenance.”

Even with this bomber heading back into service, the Air Force still has a dozen more H-models sitting in Arizona. All of these aircraft are currently in “Type-1000 storage,” according to a public affairs officer with the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, commonly referred to simply as AMARG, which oversees all the aircraft in the Boneyard.

Type-1000 storage means the Air Force keeps the planes more or less at the ready, in case the Air Force wants to get them back into action.

AMARG looks after almost 100 G-model bombers, too, the public affairs officer added. But these older aircraft are solely a source of spare parts. In December 2013, the Air Force effectively destroyed the last of these planes as part of the New START arms-control agreement with Russia.

Signed in 2010, the arms deal requires both countries to trim their combined arsenals of intercontinental nuclear missiles, sub-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers down to 700 systems, each.