Moving forward.
As I’ve already posted there are a number of aircraft types in scope to have the visible serial numbers removed, at the moment anything in the Air Mobility Command inventory is a candidate. Obviously there is the potential for other commands to follow suit, removing all identifiable markings is not the problem it would have been fifty or sixty years ago.
The United States Air Force approved the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on all aircraft in 2010, this is a technology that allows for the tracking of any data parameter of an asset. The asset could be a spare part, a vehicle or an aircraft, the tags are small and are inexpensive. A fully active RFID tag suitable for use on an aircraft costs $20 and is effective at ranges of more than 200 meters, so to pinpoint any aircraft or vehicles on an airbase is not that expensive. Passive RFID tags are extremely cheap at around $0.20 each, everybody has seen them – most supermarkets use them in some form. In fact once the infrastructure is installed on the ground, it is probably cheaper to install a few of the active tags than it is to paint the serial number on the aircraft.
The United States Air Force already has the Real Time Location System (RLTS), when combined these systems allow for the accurate recording of positional data for any asset that has a tag – using UHF RFID will also allow satelite tracking of aircraft. There are a number of bases already equiped with the ground tracking technology, many of the aircraft are already equiped with the technology.
So having done some research into this I would say that in the medium term, it is likely that other commands will certainly follow Air Mobility Command in removing the identifying marks from air assets as they are no longer needed. There are no significant technical challenged to be overcome, there are infrastructure challenges – but as they have already deployed the required infrastructure at Hill AFB, Tinker AFB and AMARC at Davis Monthan and these are the ones that I’ve found.
I would venture the opinion that it is only a matter of time before the whole United States Air Force aircraft inventory will not carry any visible serial number information, there is simply no need – a sad day for the plane spotters indeed.