>>508888418No its not, the mothballed stuff isn't counted in current inventories. We just have a lot of aircraft; a lot of it National Guard too.
Like we have 350,000 Army National Guard, who have thousands of logistical/transport helicopters... And most of the time all they do is fly around the US training, with the odd unit being deployed abroad every now and again.
Or the Air National Guard, which has 100,000 airmen and 1100 planes... When you saw that big conga line of 40 KC-135 Stratotankers flying out of the US to the Middle East recently, those were all Air National Guard.
What is so hard to believe about us have 14,000 active military aircraft? Our entire military is built around expeditionary operations and a massive logistics chain. 14,000 aircraft doesn't mean 14,000 F-35s.