Area 51 is a nickname for a military base located in the southern portion of Nevada in the western United States (north-northwest of Las Vegas). Situated at its center, on the southern shore of Groom Lake, is a large military airfield and one of the most secretive places in the world. The base's primary purpose is to support development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems.

The base lies within the United States Air Force's vast Nevada Test and Training Range. Although the facilities at the range are managed by the 99th Air Base Wing at Nellis Air Force Base, the Groom facility appears to be run as an adjunct of the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, around 160 miles (260 km) from Groom, and as such the base is known as Air Force Flight Test Center (Detachment 3).

Other names used for the facility include "Dreamland", "Paradise Ranch", "Home Base", "Watertown Strip", Groom Lake and most recently "Homey Airport". The area is part of the Nellis Military Operations Area, and military pilots refer to the forbidden airspace around it (R-4808N) as "The Box."

The intense secrecy surrounding the base, the very existence of which the U.S. government barely acknowledges, has led it to become the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentified flying object (UFO) folklore.

Geography

Area 51 shares a border with the Yucca Flat region of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), the location of 739 of the 928 nuclear tests conducted by the United States Department of Energy at NTS. The Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility is approximately 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Groom Lake.

The same "Area xx" naming scheme is used for other parts of the Nevada Test Site.

The area is connected to the internal NTS road network, with paved roads leading south to Mercury and west to Yucca Flat. Leading northeast from the lake, the wide and well-maintained Groom Lake Road runs through a pass in the Jumbled Hills. The road formerly led to mines in the Groom basin, but has been improved since their closure. Its winding course runs past a security checkpoint, but the restricted area around the base extends further east. After leaving the restricted area, Groom Lake Road descends eastward to the floor of the Tikaboo Valley, passing the dirt-road entrances to several small ranches, before converging with State Route 375, the "Extraterrestrial Highway", south of Rachel.

Operations at Groom Lake

Groom Lake is not a conventional airbase, as frontline units are not normally deployed there. It instead appears to be used during the development, testing, and training phases for new aircraft. Once these aircraft have been approved by the United States Air Force or other agencies such as the CIA, operation of that aircraft is generally conducted from a normal air force base. Groom is reported, however, to be the permanent home for a small number of Soviet-designed aircraft which are analyzed and used for training purposes.

Soviet spy satellites obtained photographs of the Groom Lake area during the height of the Cold War, and later civilian satellites produced detailed images of the base and its surroundings. These images support only modest conclusions about the base; they depict a nondescript base, long airstrip, hangars and the lake, but nothing that supports some of the claims about underground facilities.

Though no ICAO identifier for the base appears on any official document, in December 2007, airline pilots noticed that the base had appeared in their aircraft navigation systems' latest Jeppesen database revision as "KXTA".

U-2 program

Groom Lake was used for bombing and artillery practice during World War II, but was then abandoned until April 1955, when it was selected by Lockheed's Skunk Works team as the ideal location to test the forthcoming U-2 spy plane. The lakebed made an ideal strip from which they could operate the troublesome test aircraft, and the Emigrant Valley's mountain ranges and the NTS perimeter protected the test site from prying eyes and outside interference.

Lockheed constructed a makeshift base at the location, then known as Site II or "The Ranch", consisting of little more than a few shelters, workshops and trailer homes in which to house its small team. In only three months a 5000-foot runway was constructed and was servicable by July 1955. The Ranch received its first U-2 delivery on July 24, 1955 from Burbank on a C-124 Globemaster II cargo plane, accompanied by Lockheed technicians on a Douglas DC-3. The first U-2 lifted off from at Groom on August 4, 1955. A U-2 fleet under the control of the CIA began overflights of Soviet territory by mid-1956.

During this period, the NTS continued to perform a series of atmospheric nuclear explosions. U-2 operations throughout 1957 were frequently disrupted by the Plumbbob series of atomic tests, which detonated over two-dozen devices at the NTS. The Plumbbob-Hood explosion on July 5 scattered fallout across Groom and forced a temporary evacuation.

Runways

The airbase, given the ICAO airport identifier code of KXTA and listed as "Homey Airport" in aviation GPS databases, has seven runways including one that now appears to be closed. The closed runway, 14R/32L, is also by far the longest with a total length of approximately 7,100 meters (23,300 ft), not including stopway. The other runways are two asphalt runways, the 14L/32R with a length of 3,650 meters (12,000 ft) and 12/30 with a length of 1,650 meters (5,400 ft), and four runways located on the salt lake. These four runways are 09L/27R and 09R/27L, which are both approximately 3,500 meters (11,450 ft), and 03L/21R and 03R/21L, which are both approximately 3,050 meters (10,000 ft). The base has a helipad.

U.S. government's positions on Area 51

On July 14, 2003 the Federal Government admitted the facility's existence, tacitly conceding that the Air Force has an "operating location" near the lake, but does not provide any further information.

Unlike much of the Nellis range, the area surrounding the lake is permanently off-limits both to civilian and normal military air traffic. Radar stations protect the area, and unauthorized personnel are quickly expelled. Even military pilots training in the NAFR risk disciplinary action if they accidentally stray into the exclusionary "box" surrounding Groom's airspace.

Perimeter security is provided by uniformed private security guards working for EG&G's security subcontractor Wackenhut, who patrol in desert camouflage Jeep Cherokees and Humvees, and more recently, champagne-colored Ford F-150 pickups and gray Chevy 2500 4X4 pickups. Although the guards are armed with M16s, no violent encounters with Area 51 observers have been reported; instead, the guards generally follow visitors near the perimeter and radio for the Lincoln County Sheriff. Deadly force is authorized if violators who attempt to breach the secured area fail to heed warnings to halt. Fines of around $600 seem to be the normal course of action, although some visitors and journalists report receiving follow-up visits from FBI agents. Some observers have been detained on public land for pointing camera equipment at the base. Surveillance is supplemented using buried motion sensors and by HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters.

The base does not appear on public U.S. government maps; 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, but defines it as part of the Nellis restricted airspace. The official aeronautical navigation charts for the area show Groom Lake but omit the airport facilities. Similarly the National Atlas page showing federal lands in Nevada does not distinguish between the Groom block and other parts of the Nellis range. Although officially declassified, the original film taken by U.S. Corona spy satellite in the 1960s has been altered prior to declassification; in answer to freedom of information queries, the government responds that these exposures (which map to Groom and the entire NAFR) appear to have been destroyed. Terra satellite images (which were publicly available) were removed from web servers (including Microsoft's "Terraserver") in 2004, and from the monochrome 1 m resolution USGS data dump made publicly available. NASA Landsat 7 images are still available (these are used in the NASA World Wind). Higher resolution (and more recent) images from other satellite imagery providers (including Russian providers and the IKONOS) are commercially available. These show, in considerable detail, the runway marking, base facilities, aircraft, and vehicles.

Nevada's state government, recognizing the folklore surrounding the base might afford the otherwise neglected area some tourism potential, officially renamed the section of State Route 375 near Area 51 "The Extraterrestrial Highway", and posted fancifully illustrated signs along its length.

Although federal property within the base is exempt from state and local taxes, facilities owned by private contractors are not. Area 51 researcher Glenn Campbell claimed in 1994 that the base only declares a taxable value of $2 million to the Lincoln County tax assessor, who is unable to enter the area to perform an assessment.

UFO and other conspiracy theories concerning Area 51

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 SDI applications or otherwise) or 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 and or the Majestic Twelve organization.

Many of the hypotheses concern underground facilities at Groom or at nearby Papoose Lake, and include claims of a transcontinental underground railroad system, a disappearing airstrip (nicknamed the "Cheshire Airstrip", after Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat) which briefly appears when water is sprayed onto its camouflaged asphalt, and engineering based on alien technology. Publicly-available satellite imagery, however, reveals clearly visible landing strips.

In 1989, Bob Lazar came forward, claiming that he had worked at Area 51's S-4, a facility at Papoose Lake, approximately 10 miles south of Groom Lake. He was contracted to aid in the reverse engineering of one of several flying saucers that the U.S. government had in its possession which he nicknamed "the sport model". Lazar states that he discovered the method of propulsion used by the crafts: a gravity-amplification system that utilizes Element 115 (Ununpentium) and extracts the A-gravity from electrons whose orbits extend beyond their valence shell. It is through this manipulation of gravity that space-time can be distorted, creating a temporary Einstein-Rosen Bridge through which the crafts can travel vast distances instantaneously. Before Lazar's recruitment it was allegedly supposed that any nuclear reaction could be used to fuel the crafts, so discovering that only superheavy metals such as Ununpentium could be used was Lazar's largest contribution to the research. Lazar's employment at S-4 came to a halt when he was caught bringing friends to watch scheduled test flights of the discs from outside the base. Lazar subsequently went public with his knowledge of the top-secret project in hopes of finding refuge in the public eye. He claims that at least one attempt on his life was made as an effort to silence him.

The 1996 documentary Dreamland directed by Bruce Burgess included an interview with a 71 year old mechanical engineer who claimed to be a former employee at Area 51 during the 1950s, working on a "flying disc simulator" built to train US Pilots, based on a disc originating from a crashed extraterrestrial craft. During his career at Area 51 he claimed to have worked with an extraterrestrial being whose name was "J-Rod", described as a telepathic translator.

Dan Burisch (pseudonym of Dan Crain) claimed in 2004 to have worked on cloning alien viruses at Area 51, alongside the alien named "J-Rod". Burisch's scholarly credentials are the subject of much debate, as he was apparently working as a Las Vegas parole officer in 1989 while also earning a PhD at SUNY.