The secret U.S. Air Force military base in a remote area of southern Nevada is shrouded in mystery, but a military historian has finally unveiled the ‘real secrets’ of Area 51.
Highly classified, its existence and name was not actually acknowledged by the U.S. government until 2013.
The information was finally made public via several documents that were released via a Freedom of Information Act request.
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The intelligence largely centered on formerly classified CIA information about the development and testing of the U-2 spy plane.
However, the historic data also uncovered where the tech had been tested: Area 51.
To triangulate: Area 51 is roughly 100 miles from Las Vegas, and sits in the center of the Nevada National Security Site, which itself lies within the even larger Nellis Air Force Range.
There is an airfield in the space, known as Homey Airport.
The overall facility is referred to commonly as Groom Lake.
Key to not entering another combat during the Cold War was surveillance technology – for both the US and the Soviet Union.
Designed to keep tabs on the enemy, the surveillance information and the technology to get it were closely guarded secrets for national security.
Enter the U-2 spy plane.
The US plane was capable of reaching altitudes others, quite literally, couldn’t reach.
It traveled globally to capture covert high-resolution photographs and measurements.
In 1955, its remote location made Area 51 a frontrunner for testing the U-2 spy plane in order to keep it from the public and the enemy.
However, where there’s a dearth of information, mystery and wild speculation will surely follow.
Reports took flight of unidentified flying objects in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Reno Evening Gazette newspaper ran the headline: “More Flying Objects Seen in Clark Sky,” on 17 June, 1959 as just one example.
And the shroud of mystery, alongside chat of little grey and green men, remains seven decades later, with the site still off-limits to civilian and the majority of military air traffic.
Crashed alien spacecraft, space alien experiments and even extra-terrestrial staff, were conspiracy theories emanating from the now-legendary Area 51.
Our search for alien life still ongoing both at home: with a former US Intelligence Officer testifying under oath that the US government has UFOs and alien bodies.
And further afield: a gas was recently found on one planet considered a huge breakthrough.
But, with the knowledge of what was being tested there far from the prying eyes of the general public and the fact that, as test flights increased in the 1950s and 1960s, so too did local UFO sightings, it’s pretty clear what was behind the ‘unexplained’.
Classified drone and other aerial military surveillance technologies have been tested at Area 51 in the more recent past.
In fact, per professor of history and Hayes Chair in National Security Studies at Ohio State University, Christopher McKnight Nichols, many UFO sightings match almost exactly with dates and times of flights of then-classified experimental aircraft.
And while this NASA astronaut claimed he saw something ‘alien-like’ while in space and 1000-year-old ‘alien bodies’ have reportedly been unveiled in Mexican Parliament – he is certain that the rumors of alien life on Area 51, at least, are false.
McKnight Nichols confirms: “There’s no reason to think that anything other than earthly technologies have been behind the strange sights and sounds at Area 51.”
The truth is out there – and it’s not as otherworldly as you might think.
