Let’s Talk About Jeffrey Epstein’s Island.

There’s a patch of Nevada desert where, for 58 years, nothing existed… officially. And yet, if you tried to go there, big men carrying big guns would appear from behind the ridges and inform you that there was nothing to see here, please move along. And if you tried to fly over it… well, you couldn’t, because the whole place was a no-fly zone… at least for the likes of you.

Then though, in 2013, a quietly declassified CIA Report confirmed what had become, by then, quite the poorly guarded secret: there was something there – Homey Airport, or, as it’s better known to all of us… Area 51, and to say that people have had one or two things to say about it and its goings on over the years would be quite the understatement.

That presents a problem though, because a lot of information about it out there is but twaddle; much of it, admittedly, having at least some degree of truth, but then with some of it just being out and out fabrication. So today, we’re going to be doing something about the web of confusion, by talking about the REAL story of Area 51; the past, the present, the secret projects… and the alleged aliens… Let’s begin…

Why There?

And straight away, we have a problem, because what sources are we to use? Sounds like it should be a simple matter, right? Just find the most popular and most reviewed books – which presumably are the best – buy them, read them, then wahey, off we go…

Except, no… we can’t just do that – or at least, we wouldn’t be comfortable doing so – because it turns out that there’s plenty of books out there that appear to be absolute bangers on the surface, with no shortage of glowing reviews on various marketplaces… and then you find the reviews of those very books from the SERIOUS wrinkle brained types, that say things like “It’s not an adequate book if you actually care about accuracy”, “Extraordinarily gullible or journalistically incompetent”, and even “They threw us under the bus just to make a story” – with that last one coming from ACTUAL Area 51 staff speaking to the press…

And long story short, the obvious want to avoid such works – which we won’t be naming because we can’t be bothered with any drama – led us to dig a bit deeper, and happen upon a chap by the name of Peter Merlin, whose books like Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51 and Images of Aviation: Area 51 fly under the radar a bit, but are very, VERY well regarded by the people who know their stuff – and so they will be what we pull our facts from first and foremost today!

And with that little qualifier out the way, let’s get to addressing the question posed in the Chapter title: Why there? Why build Area 51 at Groom Lake specifically – that’s where it is by the way – rather than one of the many, MANY other big flat bits of the American West?

To answer that, we must flip the calendar back to the spring of 1955, because at that time, the CIA was desperate to find somewhere to hide its shiny new U-2 spy plane – then just beginning to trickle out of the factories, and imminently about to enter service.

They did already have a test site mind you – Edwards Air Force Base in California specifically – but it was way, WAY too visible and close to civilisation; so close in fact that plane spotters at the end of the runway were a common sight basically every weekend… not ideal when the whole point of the U-2 was to have a plane capable of peeking down upon Moscow from great lofty heights without the Soviets knowing…

Actually choosing the new site, however, rested on the shoulders of Test Pilot Tony LeVier, and Engineer Dorsey Kammerer, both of whom had been dispatched by Kelly Johnson, the legendary top guy at Lockheed’s ‘Skunk Works’ – the company’s top-end ‘naughty division’ basically; with the man himself being responsible for the earlier P-38 Lightning, P-80 Shooting Star, the U-2 itself, and a whole heap of other planes that’ll be coming up later in the episode.

And as befitting of a job for the ‘Naughty Division’, the two men went in masquerading as hunters; hopping from one dry lake to the next look for somewhere flat, empty, remote, AND, most crucially of all, somewhere that was already in restricted airspace… so that the CIA wouldn’t have to have the restriction newly imposed, and thus make it rather obvious to Soviet Intelligence where their super-secret flight testing was probably going down.

Simultaneously, back at CIA HQ, Project Director Richard Bissell, as well as his Air Force equivalent Colonel Osmond Ritland, were doing the exact same thing, just by leafing through paperwork instead.

Between the four of them, fifty potential sites were shortlisted, but they were, all of them, just a bit crap – either the neighbours were too close, the airspace too busy, or the local weather too unpredictable for ultra-high altitude testing. They needed the goldilocks of test sites – the one that was just right.

On the 13th of April 1955, however – they found it. The breakthrough came after all four of them – increasingly miffed at the lack of anywhere decent presenting itself – piled into an aircraft and headed for Nevada to check out a place that Ritland knew from his days test flying BIG WWII-era bombers like the B-17 and B-29; a dried lakebed right slap bang in the middle of the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range, on the edge of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Nevada Test Site.

More specifically, what it was was Groom Dry Lake – a giant oval patch of cracked clay in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by low mountains, with a knackered old wartime auxiliary airstrip at one end… and not much else. And what with the artillery cannons and the nukes already making the whole area a no-fly zone… IT WAS PERFECT.

So it was that three weeks later – on the 4th of May 1955 – Kelly Johnson himself, as well as LeVier and Kammerer, came back with a compass and a set of survey stakes and literally drew the outline of a base onto the ground; a 5,000-foot runway sketched along the southwest edge of the lake, space for a few hangars and workshops, and a cluster of prefab buildings to live in.

Johnson, with his usual sense of humour, suggested calling it Paradise Ranch, to better persuade well paid and comfort acclimatised engineers to move out to the middle of nowhere, the CIA, with their usual lack of a sense of humour, ignored him, and filed the paperwork under ‘Watertown Airstrip’ instead…. Area 51 – as it would later be known – had been born…

The U-2 Era

It didn’t take long for Watertown Airstrip to grow, and by the winter of 1955 through ’56 it was already up and running as a small, spartan outpost.

Each week, Military Air Transport Service C-54’s brought in workers from Burbank and Las Vegas, landing directly on the hard surface of the dry lakebed, or – if it was free – on the short asphalt runway that had been built at the edge of it all.

Security was TIGHT too, with the personnel that disembarked from those C-54’s immediately being hurried through a field-improved security checkpoint, where guards from ‘Federal Services Incorporated’ – a private contractor hired by the Atomic Energy Commission to provide guard and security services at the Nevada Test Site, and by extension at Watertown – verified identities, logged arrivals, and issued ID badges that limited access to ONLY where they would be working down to specific sheds, their accommodations, the amenities, and not a single building more.

And there were plenty of buildings too – all a bit ad-hoc and thrown together admittedly, but not insignificant all the same.

There was, of course, that paved runway we have already mentioned – 1.5km long, so on the short side by modern standards – as well as three T-Hangers all divided up into individual compartments for single aircraft, a small control tower, several warehouses and administrative huts, a dining hall, a water tower, about three dozen trailers, and a ‘proper’ dormitory block with 18 bedrooms beside a Headquarters building.

The final bill for all of those initial facilities came in at 832,000 olden days dollars, or around 10 million adjusted for inflation. It was double Kelly Johnson’s initial estimate, admittedly, but still, a STEAL all things considered.

Although, that bill that only climb as the site grew further, with an initial cadre of around 75 personnel growing to around 250 when operations began, which then climbed to 1,250 a few years down the line, and then… then we hit the point where the U.S. Government starts telling historians to go away when they ask.

And ALL of it in that initial stage, was to facilitate a single aircraft: the U-2.

The first disassembled airframe arrived on site on the 25th of July 1955 in the belly of a C-124 Globemaster, and was assembled inside one of the hangers – as indeed, were all of the others that came in.

It was all in the name of secrecy; get them out of the factory in bits, covered in tarps, and uncover them off ONLY when they got to Watertown… well out of the way of prying eyes. GREAT care was taken to not damage them during all of that too, with contemporary photos showing technicians attaching everything by hand, and making extensive use of padded mats to protect the surprisingly fragile airframes from accidental tool strikes.

But the U-2’s – nine of which had been delivered by March 1956 – were not the only aircraft on site, period, as indeed, a whole supporting ecosystem was also delivered to support their operation; four T-33A trainers, a Beech Model 50 Twin Bonanza used for survey and support flights, a L-20 Beaver for ferrying important people about, and a C-47 for ferrying important things about.

Also shipped in was a whole fleet of ground vehicles to support operations; most notable among which were the Ford Country Sedan ‘chase cars’. They were exactly what they sound like, cars that ‘chased’ a U-2 during take-off and landing; with an experienced pilot riding shotgun, equipped with a radio, to relay critical information to the pilot in front of him… and there was a LOT to relay, because the thing about the U-2, while it might have been cutting edge, it was an absolute nightmare to get on and off the ground.

In fact, it was specifically BECAUSE they were so cutting edge that they had these issues; with the U-2 – to achieve its ultra-high altitudes – having absurdly long, thin, and thus bendy wings, a bizarre bicycle landing-gear layout with tiny ‘pogo’ wheels that just dropped off on take-off, because there was no room in the wings to fit a ‘proper’ tricycle landing gear, which also meant that a pilot had to bring it in slow, keep it balanced, and only right at the point that it was about to topple no matter how well you steered it, gently put it down onto the reinforced wing tips… so yeah, the chase car, an unconventional idea… but a VERY big and clever one.

To bring it back to Watertown itself though – rather than what flew out of it – remember earlier, when we said it was on the edge of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Nevada Test Site? Well, they did NOT shut it down just for Watertown’s sake, with atmospheric testing at the site continuing until July 1962, when the bang button was pushed on ‘Little Feller I’ – and as you’d likely imagine, that added an… interesting dimension to it all.

Personnel, for example, were required to wear radiation badges AT ALL TIMES and also attend regular briefings on upcoming tests and safety procedures… in addition to the whole base being evacuated in the run up to a test, and remaining empty until ground surveys showed that radiation dosages on the ground had fallen to, quote, “acceptable levels” – a process that could take up to a month.

This, as you’d imagine, wrecked absolute havoc upon scheduling; with aircraft maintenance and training having to take second place to, and work around, atomic testing. Such a pain in the arse was it, actually, that at times of particularly intensive and rolling testing, they just said ‘forget it’, and shipped whole airframes… AND their accoutrements… AND their personnel… all the way back to Edward’s Air Force Base till the tests were done.

In fact, in June 1957, with ‘Operation Plumbbob’ looming – a series of 29 tests, one of which produced THAT infamous video of unprotected soldiers just straight up marching into a mushroom cloud – the CIA and the Air Force both just straight up pulled out, and relocated Watertown’s various units and facilities to less blowy-uppy locales.

Contractor testing, for example, was moved to Edward’s, and the 4028th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron – the lot who actually operated the U-2’s – redeployed to Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas.

Watertown itself was then placed in ‘Caretaker Status’ – not decommissioned or abandoned… just reduced to a bare minimum skeleton crew for maintenance, and that’s it.

The Fast Era

Watertown wouldn’t stay mothballed for long though.

It was only a year after the last U-2’s left – almost to the day in fact in June 1958 – that the Atomic Energy Commission got its hands on the site, folded the airstrip and surrounding land into the Nevada Test Site, and stuck the label ‘Area 51’ on the corresponding numbered block on the Nevada Test Site map… and yes, that’s where the popular name comes from.

As for what they did with it, they kept things deliberately bland in public: talking about a “small, satellite” Nevada Test Site installation and, in late 1959, also quietly announcing that the so called ‘Project 51’ at Groom Lake would see new construction to house Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier’s radar and data-reduction equipment – Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier, if you were wondering, being a then large American engineering and technical contractor.

And while that WAS genuinely all that was on the cards at that point, it was nothing if not prophetic when the Las Vegas Review Journal noted that this new ‘Area 51’ was “ideally suited to secret projects because experimental aircraft can take off and land without detection from any outside point.”

And exactly why was that prophetic, you ask?

Well, put it this way, in the late ‘50’s the U-2 was already old news. This was the Gerry Anderson era of engineering you have to understand, where machines were always getting bigger, more powerful, and most cooly of all… FASTER, and at genuinely shocking rates too – enter the A-12.

It was to be the U-2’s successor, and accordingly, whereas the U-2 had been a relatively slow, subsonic cruiser – basically a jet powered glider – that reached heights of 21,000 metres, and maxed out at Mach 0.8 – on a good day – the A-12 was to read 27 thousand metres, and smash through what little air was up there at Mach 3… PLUS.

To put that into perspective for those of you in the audience who aren’t mad about planes, the one you go on your holidays in, on a proper long flight, that’ll hit a mere 11,000 metres, and max out at roughly Mach 0.8. The A-12 then, no two ways about it, was a BIG deal.

So big in fact, that the CIA and Lockheed’s Naughty Division – again working together – needed to make absolutely sure that their new plane was designed, built, and operated in TOTAL secrecy; the U-2 was one thing, but this… this could NOT get out. No ifs. No buts. And no slip-ups.

And there was only one place anyone could think of that had any chance at all of making sure it didn’t… Watertown Airfield. Thusly, they were back on site in 1960.

MAJOR work needed to be done however; as what they had built before was just not good enough for the coming A-12, they needed a way, WAY longer runway for one, as well as much, MUCH larger hangers, as well a hell of a lot more fuel storage, and specialised test ranges… at the very minimum.

The construction work on all that, and more, began in earnest in 1960, and by 1964 – thanks to near constant double shifts – it was done… although they did get the most essential facilities completed within a year or so.

And what a place they had built. That original 1.5km asphalt runway? Gone – now reduced to a mere taxiway for the main, 2.6km concrete runway, and its supplementary 1.5km asphalt overrun, for emergencies. Further, they’d also slapped a 3.2km ‘hook’ down, so that an A-12 pilot running out of paved surface with not enough up to show for it could deliberately swing off the overrun and bring it to a stop on something hard rather than just plough through into a sagebrush and blow up shortly thereafter.

And around that runway – very much the heart of it all as it was – grew what one CIA official later described as “a monstrous airstrip that went all the way from hell to breakfast.” Four large hangers on the North Ramp housed the test A-12s, and other new facilities included maintenance shops, offices, warehouses, a commissary, crash-rescue stations and a new headquarters building. Off to one side, housing was also upgraded from trailers to proper bricks and motor buildings, and a surprising number of recreational extras appeared: a three-hole golf course, squash and basketball courts, an indoor gym, a small fishing pond known as Slater Lake, and a softball field.

In other words, whereas Watertown was cobbled together using duct tape, making use of whatever crap the Air Force and CIA had lying around, Area 51 was a proper, SERIOUS base. And good Lord, what manner of peculiar and outlandish things would be done there as it assumed its place as the US’s go-to place for experimental aircraft development and sensitive defence projects.

There was, of course, the A-12, with the first airframe – ‘Article 121’ – arriving at Area 51 in early 1962, and making its first proper test flight on April the 26th, with Lou Schalk behind the stick. By April it had completed three initial sorties, and was well into its basic handling trails, before eventually entering full service in 1967.

15 were built in all (13 ‘normal’ A-12’s, and two M-21 ‘drone carrying’ variants) and they would all spend basically their entire careers at Area 51, with only three of them ever leaving the base operationally, deploying to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa in 1967 through ’68 for the CIA’s short lived ‘Black Shield’ program – which would see them photograph Vietnam in support of America’s operations in the titular war, as well as North Korea after they pinched the USS Pueblo in 1968, and Washington then found itself rather wanting to know where they had taken her… and indeed her crew.

And with the A-12 being pulled from service in 1968 in favour of the even faster still SR-71… that’s about all we can say about it…

Similarly, we also won’t be saying much about the SR-71 – not because of its service being short lived though, as it would serve the U.S. diligently from 1966 through ’99, but because it has basically NO connection to Area 51, at all, with its development and flight testing being centred on Edward’s Airforce Base, and its operational squadrons running out of Beale in California and forward bases like Kadena and RAF Mildenhall in the UK.

What DOES have a connection though – and we’re going to have to do this quickfire style because we do not have time to dedicate a paragraph or three to all of them – is:

The YF-12A interceptor: An A-12 spin-off with a stretched nose and missile bays. All three prototypes were assembled and first flown at Area 51 in the early ’60s, before being moved to Edward’s once President Johnson went public with them in 1964.

The D-21 Drone: A small, unmanned spy aircraft designed to fly faster and higher than its manned cousins, take its photos, and then blow itself up after dumping the film. Its early test flights, and later tests to get it launching cleanly from a bomber’s wing, were all tied back to Area 51.

The Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier Radar and Measurement Ranges: The firm built a radar test complex into the west and south-west side of Groom Lake. They used inflatable, so called ‘swimming pool’ pylons and 15-metre poles to hold up scale models and full-size aircraft, then measured their radar cross-section. Come the early 1980’s, those ranges had grown into a full mock Soviet-style air-defence network of foreign and replica radars arranged around the lake, plus an airborne test system called the ‘Dynamic Coherent Measurement System’, that flew around measuring how visible different shapes and aircraft really were.

The High-Altitude Solar Programme: In 1983, Area 51’s runway was also used to fly an experimental long-winged aircraft from AeroVironment called the ‘High-Altitude Solar Programme’. It was flown by radio control, powered initially by batteries and intended to work with solar panels on its wings, and was one of the first serious attempts to prove that a high-altitude, long-endurance, solar-powered aircraft was actually realistic… the fact that solar-powered aircraft remain a gimmick to this very day gives you a clue as to how it went.

The Stealth Era

And because we’ve just started touching tips with the 1980’s, now is a great time for us to draw a line in the story, and open a new Chapter… because by start of that decade the ‘fast era’ was basically over, with the A-12s retired, the drones crated up, and Mach 3 plus no longer the shiny new thing that it once had been…

Not a problem for Area 51’s place in the history books though, because at the very same time the facility was getting its teeth stuck into something new… something BIG – so big in fact, that it would eventually change military aviation FOREVER, and usher in an entirely standard for what a combat aircraft should be: STEALTH.

It all began in 1977, when two funny looking things – rather reminiscent of those things your nan keeps her cheese in – were shipped over to Area 51, having been disassembled and thrown in the belly of a C-5 Galaxy.

They were the ‘Have Blue’ prototypes: small, angular, “survival test beds”, built by Lockheed’s Naughty Division – who else – and designed to be the VERY complicated answer to a question most simple: can we build an aircraft that radar can’t see?

TL;DR on the basic idea: radar works by ‘bouncing’ radio waves off of things, and picking it back up on its way back – we know how fast radio waves travel, and so from that, can use how long it takes to come back to figure out exactly where it is. You can also use things like the angle you shoot it out at to calculate altitude, and some other maths to figure out some other stuff – but you get the basic idea.

And the boffins’ over at the Skunk Works had been mulling over that basic idea over, because, in theory, if you could stop the radio waves bouncing back somehow – by shooting them off in other directions, or just straight up absorbing them, etc – then, YES, there was no reason at all why you couldn’t make an aircraft that was invisible, or at least, returned a VERY small radar signature.

The only problem: an aircraft like that, done perfectly by the maths ended up being… unorthodox… thus the Have Blue’s weird shape, and thus it being shipped to Area 51 to find out if, A), if all that theory translated to the real world, and B), if it could actually fly… at least without becoming very well acquainted with the sides of mountains more often than is healthy for an aircraft.

Luckily though, it DID. The first Have Blue made its maiden flight from the Groom Lake runway in December 1977, the second followed in 1978, and together they flew a few dozen sorties in all.

And on the radars scattered around the lakebed – including some actual Soviet radar sets acquired through Israel after they themselves captured them in the 1967 and ’73 wars – the effect was obvious: compared to a conventional jet of similar size, Have Blue’s radar return was MINISCULE.

Ultimately though, they both crashed, one in 1978, and the other in ’79 – both getting quietly buried out on the test range – but, they were deemed a success all the same. The base idea worked, they just needed to refine the idea into something less crashy, and that had actual battlefield utility… and of course, Area 51 would only continue to have a HUGE role to play now that Pandora’s Stealthy Box had been opened.

The first attempt at that was ‘Senior Trend’ – the code-name for the F-117 Nighthawk Programme.

The first Full-Scale Development Prototype, ‘Article 780’, arrived at Area 51 in the exact same way that the Have Blue’s had before them in 1981. It’s first engine tests took place in April of that same year, and then, on the 18th of June, it made its maiden flight – wearing a rough desert camouflage scheme rather than its now iconic monochromatic black paintjob.

Eventually though, once it hit ‘good enough to be trusted’ status, day-to-day F-117 operations moved north to Tonopah Test Range Airfield, but, Area 51 stayed the cradle: the place where new software loads, new weapons fits and odd little configuration changes were taken for a spin before anyone risked them on a squadron jet. If you like, Area 51 was the Nighthawk’s garage; Tonopah was its driveway.

Lockheed, however, had more up their sleeve, as running alongside Have Blue and Senior Trend was a much less famous programme: ‘Senior Prom’ – a series of stealthy cruise-missile demonstrators, basically.

They were small, stored in Hangar 17 on base, and launched out the back of a modified C-130. They wore radar-absorbent coatings, had a distinct ‘Have Blue but shrunk in the dryer’ vibe about them, and, by all accounts, did EXACTLY what the engineers wanted them to do – they were just never turned into an operational weapon and the whole thing quietly died after being cancelled in 1982. Exactly why remains a point of contention to this day too, as by all accounts, they were quite agreeable little things, with no design flaw that couldn’t realistically be engineered out.

There was also ‘Tacit Blue’, and if Have Blue and the F-117 were all about flat panels and sharp edges, Tacit Blue went for the opposite: smooth curves, bulging sides, and an overall look that, with the best will in the world, didn’t exactly have Airfix running out to buy a license to its image.

Inside, it carried a side-looking battlefield surveillance radar, with the general idea being to see if you could build an aircraft that was stealthy enough to loiter near the front lines for a looooong time, hoovering up ground-movement data as it lingered, without lighting up every radar screen for 500 miles.

They only ever made the one, and it was assembled in one of Area 51’s hangars and first flew on the 5th of February 1982 with Richard Thomas taking the helm – making 135 flights in all, usually three or four a week, before the program was wrapped up in 1985.

There’s also the B-2, F-22, and F-35 to consider too, the current crème-de-la-crème of stealth aircraft GLOBALLY:

For the B-2, its main development and flight testing lived at Palmdale and Edward’s – but, Area 51 still had skin in the game, as its instrumented ranges were used to give the radar cross-section a once-over once the prototypes were up and flying; using the very same ring of Soviet radar sets, and some extra American ones, that were used to test the Have Blue’s.

For the F-22, it’s a similar story, with Edward’s being the main test site, but Area 51’s radar being used to test its stealth capabilities.

The F-35 is an outlier, however, because from what we know, it has basically NO Area 51 connection at all, with its stealth evaluation being done at Lockheed Martin’s – there was a merger in 1995, don’t worry about it – dedicated test site in Helendale, California.

Top and bottom of it then; all of this had basically turned Area 51 into a full-blown stealth laboratory, and, naturally, the ‘village’ side of the base had to adapt to match. New hangers and shelters went up to cope with awkward geometries and wingspans. Extra dormitories were added to house a larger, more permanent test community that was now running round-the-clock operations. Recreation spaces – gyms, bars, clubs – quietly multiplied. The F-117 avionics engineers even had their own unofficial watering hole in one of the old dorm blocks, the ‘Conehead Bar’, as they called it, and parties, softball games and band nights filled the downtime… all under the constraint that ANYTHING that happened while they were there… didn’t.

Current Activities

And now, we arrive at the part of the episode where we must discuss what has been happening at Area 51 more recently, with the B-2, F-22, and F-35 note that we ended the last Chapter on bringing us to the turn of the millenium… ish.

Small problem with that though; we’ve arrived at the point where the documents stop being declassified, and where when you probe, the U.S. Government instead politely asks you to mind your own business. Fear not though, because there are SOME limited scraps of information that have either come out intentionally, or that clever sorts have been able to piece together.

For one, we know that it’s been getting bigger, as satellite imagery and long-lens shots from Tikaboo Peak – the nearest legal overlook – alike, show fresh concrete and steel all over the place.

In 2023, by way of an example, construction finished on a new three-bay hangar on the North Ramp, each bay sized for a fighter-class jet. Recent photos have also shown HH-60-series rescue helicopters and “fast movers” – widely thought to be F/A-18s – parked under new shelters, plus upgrades around the power sub-station and extra support buildings…

There’s also a LOT of personnel coming in and out. So much in fact, that the base (and some other adjacent facilities) has its own personal air shuttle fleet commonly referred to as ‘Janet Airlines’ – ‘Janet’ rumoured to be an initialism of ‘Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.’

We know of at least six Boeing 737’s, as well a few Beech 1900’s that make up the fleet, and they run a DAILY service from a dedicated terminal at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.

Interestingly too, because Janet Airlines isn’t quite naughty enough to warrant going full ‘transponder off’ in its operations; we can totally just look up their flight routes ourselves – which we did, finding that airframe ‘N273RH’, on the day of looking (the 27th of January 2026) took off from Las Vegas at 13:11, with no destination listed on the log. It flew North, and disappeared from radar coverage about 20km or so out from Area 51…

Also up in the air, we also occasionally get glimpses of some interesting things in the airspace around the base.

As examples,

The RQ-170: a flying wing UAV… and that’s all we know about it for certain design wise – though it stands to reason it’s a stealth reconnaissance platform. One was pictured taking off in the Area 51 area in 2024, although, as far as the US Military is concerned, only one official photograph exists of it… this one.

The NT-43A: in all likeliness the single most hideous object ever crafted by Man’s hand, but an important one all the same – as in all of its bulbous sections are various top shelf radar sets used to test stealth aircraft. It was spotted at Area 51 in August 2025.

Whatever this thing was: Captured flying overhead in January 2026; it could be another RQ-170, could be its younger naughtier brother, the RQ-180, could be a B-21, the B-2’s incoming replacement, or it could be something else that we don’t even know exists yet… we just don’t know for sure from this photo.

Another mysterious triangle: this time papped from space in January 2022.

A third, decidedly less triangular triangle spotted in October 2021. This one is generally believed to be an RQ-180.

Back on the ground though, Area 51’s radar installation has been evolving too, with a Russian S-125 fire-control radar – the very same basic type used in an air-defence system that once shot down an F-117 over Serbia, appearing in November 2021.

Then, in 2024, a new 30-metre FM transmitter tower appeared about half a mile inside the back gate, that pumps out music on 99.9MHZ ONLY when missions are underway, as well as a twin tower that does the same, but on 99.1MHZ… we have no idea on these; but people typically believe it has something to do with trialling out jamming so called ‘passive radar’ sets – i.e. those that don’t transmit anything themselves, but instead use civilian radio or TV signals as the ‘torch’ and just listen for the echoes bouncing back off aircraft… it’s quite the fancy and new bit of technology.

We could go on, but you get the idea. We do NOT properly know what is currently going on at Area 51, but it all points in a certain direction… the direction that – shockingly we know – points to the place that has been testing advanced military aircraft since 1955… still testing advanced military aircraft to this day.

The ET in the Room

There’s a certain glaring something we haven’t mentioned yet, isn’t there? Something that we promised you right at the start of the episode, and indeed, the thing that is most commonly associated with Area 51 in fact… ALIENS.

And our not having done that can only mean one of two things; either, A), they just aren’t a thing at all and musings on the matter are but nonsense, hence their not making an appearance in the ‘story’ of Area 51 proper, or, B), there actually IS some extra-terrestrial shenanigans going on over there… and we’ve been building up to a hell of a reveal.

Unfortunately though, while we wish we could say it was B) – and we really do, because it’d be banging for the algorithm – A) is in fact the answer. There just isn’t any decent evidence, at all, to suggest that ET has ever popped down to Groom Lake for an all dayer. As Peter Merlin put it more eloquently, quote:

“Born amid Cold War secrecy, (Area 51) has become an object of mystery in modern popular culture colored by allegations of involvement with UFOs, aliens, and sinister conspiracies. Recent availability of declassified government documents and photographs makes it possible to cut through the fog of dark rumors and speculation to reveal the true legacy of one of the nation’s premier assets for flight tests and evaluation of cutting-edge aviation technology.”

That doesn’t mean we can’t talk about Area 51’s associations with aliens though, and in fact, we should, because at the end of the day, those associations are a part of its story… for better or worse.

So, having said that, how did Area 51 end up as the ‘the alien place’ in popular imagination then?

Well, it’s a story that begins not in Nevada… but in New Mexico, at an Army Air Force Base, perched on the edge of a city you may have heard of… ROSWELL.

It was there – or 120km North of there anyway – that, in July 1947, that a rancher by the name of Mac Brazel stumbled across a field full of wreckage – a messy scattering of tinfoil, rubber strips, and tough, papery debris… and that’s about it. A flying saucer, it certainly was not.

But the military – specifically the 509th Bomb Group – when issuing a press release on the matter, for reasons that are known only to themselves and God, decided to say that, quote:

“The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chaves County.”

And that, when sprinkled with a good old bit of paper-shifting hyperbole from the press became headlines like “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region”, as in the Roswell Daily Record. From there, a FEW people talked about aliens for a news cycle, even fewer people still cared, and then, as they tend too, everyone found themselves distracted by some other story or another, and the incident was forgotten…

…for a time anyway, because, in 1978, a nuclear physicist turned UFO researcher named Stanton Friedman tracked down the long-retired Major Jesse Marcel, the man who had handled the wreckage back in ’47, and he claimed that the debris he recovered was definitively “not of this world”, and that the pieces of foil and wood shown to the press were merely props substituted to hide the real wreckage.

And while his claims have NEVER been verified – either by physical or documentary evidence – it was enough to make the idea of the ‘Roswell UFO Incident’ stick in the public zeitgeist… despite all of that evidence pointing to the wreckage from a little something called Project Mogul, which sought to find a way to use microphones fitted on high altitude balloons to detect soundwaves emitted from Soviet atomic testing.

It was after then too, that Area 51 came into the story. Only as whispers at first, but as whispers that were the perfect supplement to the fermenting conspiracy.

Area 51 was BLANK on maps after all, glaringly blank in fact, and with ‘impossible’ things being spotted in the area around it from time to time – tiny, bright glints way above normal airliner height; contrails where nothing was supposed to be flying; odd silhouettes that didn’t match any plane you’d see on the shelf of a model shop; men in pickups who’d appear and tell you to turn around if you tried approaching – it did make sense, on a certain level at least that the facility would have a connection to any supposed alien goings on.

The whispers, however, would become a shout in 1989, thanks to a fellow by the name of Bob Lazar.

Basically, in a series of interviews with KLAS-TV Channel 8 out of Las Vegas – conducted by investigative reporter George Knapp – he claimed he’d worked not only at Area 51 itself, but at a related site called ‘S-4’ tucked away nearby on the edge of a dry lake south of Groom.

In his first appearance on the 14th of May, filmed in silhouette and under the alias ‘Dennis’, and then in follow-up segments later that year under his real name, he alleged that the U.S. government had nine recovered saucers hidden in hangars cut into a hillside, with doors disguised to look like natural rock when closed.

His job, he said, was to help a small team reverse-engineer their propulsion systems. Those systems supposedly being powered by a then-hypothetical super-heavy element he called ‘Element 115’: a fuel that, in his telling, generated a gravity field which was channelled through three bell-shaped ‘amplifiers’ under the hull, allowing the craft to hover, pivot on their side and zip about with no wings, no intakes, no exhausts, and none of the usual aerodynamic clutter you’d expect on a human-built aircraft.

And while that may have all been complete and utter nonsense – seriously, even other ufologists think Lazar just pulls stories right out of his backside – the story took off BIG STYLE, and from there, the rest was history.

Area 51 was now THE alien place as far as the stereotypical American everyman was concerned.

And so, come 1995 you could shoot your way through a fiction alien outbreak on the arcade light gun game ‘Area 51’; in 1996 the movie ‘Independence Day’ made Area 51 the base where the crashed saucer was kept; by 1998, The X-Files crew were there looking for UFO’s at primetime; the slept on 2005 game ‘Area 51’ then gave you another chance to run around shooting aliens up in the place; and so and so forth; until the fervour hit its peak in 2019, when a real life not made up American everyman by the name of Matty Roberts created the totally serious, and not at all a joke Facebook event ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us’…

Conclusion

And that’s about it for our little wander around Area 51.

Some would call its reality – absent of little green fellas as it is – dull. And sure, admittedly, while they would undoubtedly add a certain spice to its story, but to call Area 51 dull of all things could not be more wrong, because what it actually is, is one of the single most important places on earth for aviation’s past, present, and indeed future.

It’s a place where daft-looking sketches became world-changing aircraft; where test pilots climb into machines that barely even have names yet; where secrecy, paranoia, mad ambition and very real ingenuity all meet on a strip of concrete in the middle of nowhere.

And even now, its story isn’t finished, because as we speak, satellites are still squinting at that funny little patch of concrete beside Groom Lake, and trying to figure out what the hell those shapes ACTUALLY are; spotters on the ground are trying to get to the bottom of what the hell those blurry triangles in the sky are that keep ghosting in and out of range; and engineers and aircrew are out there in control of the whole lot.

Whatever they end up being though – if we ever even end up finding out – the Area 51 connection makes them the spiritual successors of some absolute JUGGERNAUTS of aviation; the ones that flew higher, faster, and indeed, quieter, than anything before them ever had.

Not a bad legacy is it, for a place that didn’t even exist for 58 years?

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Area 51?

Area 51 is a highly classified United States Air Force facility located in southern Nevada. It is known for its involvement in the development and testing of experimental aircraft and advanced military technologies.

Why was Area 51 built at Groom Lake?

Area 51 was built at Groom Lake because it was a flat, empty, remote location already in restricted airspace, making it ideal for secret flight testing of the U-2 spy plane and other classified projects.

What was the first aircraft tested at Area 51?

The first aircraft tested at Area 51 was the U-2 spy plane, which began arriving in disassembled form in July 1955.

What is the significance of the A-12 aircraft in Area 51’s history?

The A-12 was a successor to the U-2 and was designed to fly at much higher speeds and altitudes. It was developed and tested in secrecy at Area 51, with the first test flight occurring in April 1962.

What role did Area 51 play in the development of stealth technology?

Area 51 was crucial in the development of stealth technology, serving as the testing ground for prototypes like the Have Blue and the F-117 Nighthawk. It became a stealth laboratory, testing and refining stealth aircraft designs.

What is the connection between Area 51 and the Roswell UFO incident?

The Roswell UFO incident in 1947 sparked rumors about extraterrestrial activity, which later became associated with Area 51 due to its secrecy and the sightings of unusual aircraft in the area. However, there is no credible evidence to support the idea that Area 51 is involved in alien research.

What is the current status of Area 51?

Area 51 continues to be an active military facility involved in the testing of advanced aircraft and technologies. Recent satellite imagery and observations indicate ongoing construction and the presence of new aircraft and infrastructure.

What is the significance of the ‘Janet Airlines’ in relation to Area 51?

Janet Airlines is a fleet of aircraft that provides daily shuttle services to Area 51 from Las Vegas. The flights are used to transport personnel and equipment to and from the facility, maintaining its secrecy and operational efficiency.

What is the ‘S-4’ site mentioned in connection with Area 51?

The ‘S-4’ site is a nearby facility allegedly involved in the storage and study of extraterrestrial technology, according to claims made by Bob Lazar in the 1980s. However, these claims are widely disputed and lack credible evidence.

What is the ‘Storm Area 51’ event?

The ‘Storm Area 51’ event was a social media-driven initiative in 2019, created as a joke by Matty Roberts. It encouraged people to storm Area 51 to ‘see them aliens,’ but it was largely dismissed as a prank and did not result in any significant action.

Sources

• Original Places video: Let’s Talk About Jeffrey Epstein’s Island.
• Hero image source by Saga1111 / openverse, by-sa.