The United States Air Force facility commonly known as Area 51 is a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base, within the Nevada Test and Training Range. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the correct names for the facility are Homey Airport (ICAO: KXTA) and Groom Lake, though the name Area 51 was used in a CIA document from the Vietnam War. Other names used for the facility include Dreamland, and nicknames Paradise Ranch, Home Base and Watertown. The special use airspace around the field is referred to as a Restricted Area 4808 North (R-4808N). Area 51 is located in the southern portion of Nevada in the western United States, 83 miles (134 km) north-northwest of Las Vegas. Situated at its center, on the southern shore of Groom Lake, is a large military airfield. The site was acquired by the United States Air Force in 1955, primarily for the flight testing of the Lockheed U-2 aircraft. The area around Area 51, including the small town of Rachel on the aptly named "Extraterrestrial Highway", is a popular tourist destination.
The USGS topographic map for the area only shows the long-disused Groom Mine. A civil aviation chart published by the Nevada Department of Transportation shows a large restricted area, defined as part of the Nellis restricted airspace. The National Atlas page showing federal lands in Nevada shows the area as lying within the Nellis Air Force Base. Higher resolution (and more recent) images from other satellite imagery providers (including Russian providers and the IKONOS) are commercially available. These show the runway markings, base facilities, aircraft, and vehicles.
BOB LAZAR'S TESTIMONY
In November 1989, Lazar appeared in a special interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS to discuss his purported employment at "S4", a facility he claims exists near Area 51. In his interview with Knapp, Lazar said he encountered several flying saucers. He says he first thought the saucers were secret terrestrial aircraft whose test flights must have been responsible for many UFO reports. On closer examination and from having been shown multiple briefing documents, Lazar came to the conclusion that the discs were of extraterrestrial origin. In his filmed testimony Lazar explains how this impression first hit him after he boarded one craft being studied and examined its interior. Lazar claims to have "worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory (specifically in the Meson Physics facility), involved with experiments using the half a mile long Linear Particle Accelerator." For the propulsion of the studied vehicles, Bob Lazar claims that the atomic Element 115 served as the fuel. The mass of the nuclear fuel aboard each craft was said to be approximately two kilograms and was enough to last for several years before requiring replenishment. Lazar also claims that he was given introductory briefings describing the historical involvement by extraterrestrial beings with this planet for the past 10,000 years. The beings allegedly originate from the first and second planets within the Zeta Reticuli star system and are therefore referred to as Zeta Reticulans, popularly called 'greys'. According to Lazar these beings were referred to as 'the kids' within the program, or as 'gourds' among the personnel.
OTHER TESTIMONIES
In December 2007, airline pilots noticed that the base had appeared in their aircraft navigation systems' latest Jeppesen database revision with the ICAO airport identifier code of KXTA and listed as "Homey Airport". The probably inadvertent release of the airport data led to advice by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) that student pilots should be explicitly warned about KXTA, not to consider it as a waypoint or destination for any flight even though it now appears in public navigation databases. Its secretive nature and undoubted connection to classified aircraft research, together with reports of unusual phenomena, have led Area 51 to become a focus of modern UFO and conspiracy theories. Some of the activities mentioned in such theories at Area 51 include:
- The storage, examination, and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft (including material supposedly recovered at Roswell), the study of their occupants (living and dead), and the manufacture of aircraft based on alien technology.
- Meetings or joint undertakings with extraterrestrials.
- The development of exotic energy weapons for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or other weapons programs.
- The development of means of weather control.
- The development of time travel and teleportation technology.
- The development of unusual and exotic propulsion systems related to the Aurora Program.
- Activities related to a supposed shadowy one world government or the Majestic 12 organization