Area 51 is a research site that operated as an aircraft manufacturing and testing center during the Cold War, reinforced and protected by the United States Government, and which today is dedicated to military research and development.
Everything that smells like secrecy and that comes from the United States Government carries with it a very attractive aura of mystery. Area 51 has fueled literature, film, scholarly and documentary articles for decades, and the imagination of many as well. Still today. So much so that an event on Facebook scheduled for September 20 urges you to participate in a ‘mass meeting’ to enter this area , located in Nevada (USA), and check once if these conspiracy theories are true. There are already a million people summoned, and another 865,000 declare themselves ‘interested’, under the title of Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us (Irruption in Area 51. They cannot stop us all). The statement in question reads as follows:
“We will all meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction and coordinate our entry. If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens.”
“We will all gather them at the Area 51 Alien Center and coordinate our entry. If we run, we will move faster than their bullets. Let’s see those aliens.”
In the social imaginary, Area 51 is a kind of clandestine place for UFOs and aliens; Now, this imaginary materializes through this surprising and massive convocation, at a time when conspiracy theories and pseudosciences (in short, “pseudo things”) are very much in vogue and are gaining more and more followers on the Internet ( flat Earth and its astonishing rise is an example of this).
But the mystery surrounding this place becomes much more rational if we understand it for what it is: a US government facility intended to test various secret aircraft projects. In fact, there are CIA documents that have been declassified at various points in the past decades attesting to the role of Area 51 in testing radar systems, and detailing some secret operations during the Cold War. Mystery, yes; but all military, and nothing extraterrestrial, which does not detract from interest, on the other hand.
The origin of Area 51
In 1955, Kelly Johnson, director of the Skunk Works (code name for a high-tech aircraft design program) of Lockheed Corporation (American aircraft company) was looking for a suitable place to safely (and secretly) test a Revolutionary spy plane, the U-2.
During a trip made on April 12 of that year with Richard Bissell, project manager of the CIA; and Air Force Col. Osmund Ritland flew over what appeared to be an airstrip near a salt flats known as Groom Lake, near the northeast corner of the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Nevada Proving Ground. It was the Groom Lake airfield , which had been active since 1942 under the name of Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field . Johnson and his colleagues agreed that it would be an ideal site to test the U-2 and train its pilots on the project, which they named Aquatone .
President Eisenhower approved the plan , and the territory, known by its map designation (Area 51), was added as a Nevada test site. By July 1955, the base was ready, and personnel from the CIA, Air Force, and Lockheed Corporation were set to work.
Image: The National Security Agency
Simultaneously, Lockheed began to work on another project, known as OXCART, which consisted of the manufacture of the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft. Subsequently, in the following decades, the US air forces and secret services continued to manufacture aircraft and conduct tests on various projects, such as the F-117 / Have Blue. All under the most absolute secrecy and with overwhelming military protection (with the aim of hiding from the Soviet Union the existence of such aircraft during the Cold War).
Area 51 today
In 2013, the administrator of NASA, Charles Bolden, confirmed the existence of Area 51 in an interview for the Sky News network. He also explained that it is a remote detachment of the Edwards Base of the North American Air Force dedicated to the investigation and military development , as in fact it did in its origin.
Bolden acknowledged in the interview that “the work that is carried out there is in the strictest confidentiality, but that does not mean that there are indications of extraterrestrial technology”, or anything like it.
Today you can consult on the internet a wide collection of scientific literature that has been gradually declassified by the CIA where the operations carried out in Area 51 are explained, as well as its history and a map of its location.
But it is also true that Area 51 today remains strictly guarded and maintains dissuasive posters, in which it is warned that it is “forbidden to take photographs” and that also “the use of lethal devices is allowed”, that is to say: against any person who deals to access, ‘shoot to kill’ will be justified . Some ‘excessive’ security measures that continue to arouse the suspicion of many.
