A mix. For the mechanical and hydraulic systems, it's certainly not dead though maybe underutilized or, as the mission has evolved, unnecessary. These aircraft

A mix. For the mechanical and hydraulic systems, it's certainly not dead though maybe underutilized or, as the mission has evolved, unnecessary. These aircraft get torn apart and rebuilt during depot maintenance every X flight hours or years. If those systems aren't working, they're fixed. They also tear out old patches and replace them with new ones, and these days (this century, really) they don't bolt on patches which creates its own problems they use adhesives and they use modeling to try and reduce the patch size to its minimum. So you don't fly around with unnecessary patches on your airframe (here I'm assuming you're at one of the competent depots, not like NG who left a plug in a fuel line and totaled the plane, fortunately it was able to land safely). But for electronic equipment and some stations and fixtures it may be deadweight or excessive weight. Electronic equipment may not get a modernization effort for decades. And depending on who wins that contract (who am I kidding, if it's one of the main five primes you're fucked) it's likely the effort will fail 2-3 times before it succeeds. Imagine flying with a radio built in 1980. Everything in it except maybe the power supply and of course the antenna can fit inside a cellphone today. That's a lot of weight that could be removed, but it's not deadweight. It's still in use. But you also find things like stations and even racks (in some of the heavies) to hold LRUs or control panels and screens that were designed back when you needed 20 LRUs to do what one can now, or a huge wiring harness that is now a keyboard, mouse, and workstation. These stations and racks don't always get cleaned out like they should and would be dead weight.