Think about a Cold War-era supersonic fighter designed to catch up with Soviet bomber planes retiring in a state where it sits untouched, at least 100 feet beneath the surface of the waters near the Florida Panhandle, serving no purpose other than housing amberjacks. This is not science fiction but simply how Florida manages fisheries. According to a January 2004 guidelines document jointly produced by the Gulf States and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commissions, retired aircraft have been sunk by the United States for many decades now as artificial reefs. Florida has embraced this concept more than any other state.
In September 1995, three decommissioned F-106 Delta Dart aircraft, Air Force interceptors that had spent their final years as QF-106 target drones flown out of Tyndall Air Force Base's 82nd Aerial Targets Squadron, were deployed to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico off Bay County, near Panama City. Bay County's own artificial-reef database lists the deployment as three F-106 airplanes placed at Large Area Site A on 9/25/1995, at a depth of 112 feet. The depth is so great that only qualified divers have been able to view them up close.
Why sink a perfectly good fighter jet
What follows is the point that might irk the environmentalist in you: Dumping military junk into the sea is precisely the type of cutting corners that one might associate with the nineties. But it's not cutting corners. It's a policy, and quite stringent at that. Before being dumped, whatever it is that gets dumped has to be stripped of its fuel, hydraulic fluid, and any material that might be toxic when left to leach.
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