The Top-Secret Warplanes of Area 51

Stealth jets? Hypersonic bombers? What's really being developed at the military's most famous classified base?
By Bill Sweetman Posted 10.01.2006 at 2:00 am 15 Comments
by DigitalGlobe: Satellite imagery taken on January 17, 2006, of Area 51 reveals little. Base security personnel know when satellites are passing overhead, and test aircraft remain indoors at those times. Personnel work in windowless offices and are locked inside when anything other than their own project is outdoors. Photo by DigitalGlobe
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For a closer look at the exotic aircraft the Air Force might be cooking up at Area 51, launch the photo gallery.

On a trip to las vegas in 2004, observing from my east-facing hotel room in the pyramidal Luxor Hotel at daybreak, I watched a fleet of six unmarked 737s make commuter flights to nowhere. These aircraft depart every weekday morning from a tidy, anonymous terminal on the western side of McCarran International Airport. A long line of cars pours into a 1,600-spot parking lot as the jets pull away from the terminal, taxi to the runways, and head out into the desert sky. At the end of the day, the shuttle flights return and the lot empties. The passengers go home and tell their families nothing about what happened at work that day.

Cut to April 4 this year. San Diego is hit by a rumbling shock that isn´t an earthquake. It is ruled out by the media as a sonic boom after military operators claim it is not one of their aircraft. San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Alex Roth does some digging and comes up with six puzzlingly similar incidents around the country since 2003.

Fast-forward to July, at the Farnborough International Airshow in southeastern England. Frank Cappuccio, the avuncular vice president of Lockheed Martin´s secretive Skunk Works division, opens a press conference by introducing what he calls a promotional video, â€something to show the kids and families about what we do.†Two minutes into the show, a gray, cockpit-less airplane that nobody has seen before-it looks like a B-2 bomber´s chick-soars over a backdrop of stony, barren hills and mountains.

All these events are linked. They are the visible signs of an invisible, parallel world within the universe of aerospace and defense: the classified, or â€black,†world of secret military programs. Those unmarked 737s were ferrying employees to the flight-test center near Groom Lake, Nevada, known to the public as Area 51. The gray airplane is Polecat, a next-generation stealth unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-Cappuccio´s video was his sly way of unveiling the program. Those earthquakes? Quite possibly sonic booms from a long-suspected hypersonic attack vehicle, a sleek aircraft that has consumed the imaginations of black-project enthusiasts and military analysts, including me, for two decades. Though seemingly dormant in recent years, the program appears to be on the move again, and with a renewed vigor that has me feeling, somewhat unsettlingly, a bit like the aerospace industry´s own Ahab.


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15 Comments

Comments

DontheDon
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 03/17/08 at 7:40 pm

well, it's NOT what YOU think, after all, is it? It's what THEY think, isn't it?

if they think it is a security risk, then it is....unless you somehow manage to go before a JUDGE...then it is his/her call....assuming that he/she isn't in THEIR pocket....and remember, when you ASSUME...you make an ASS of U and ME.

0 out of 3 people found this comment helpful
duncaniowa
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 03/30/08 at 7:30 pm

Hardly. The aircraft they let us see are not the dangerous ones anyway. One would imagine that the real military intelligence types around the world do not rely on Popular Science for their information.
That being said, I enjoy your magazine, and have for years.

2 out of 3 people found this comment helpful
toysoldier5
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 03/30/08 at 11:28 pm

The entire country should know everything that's going on at Area 51 and in the intelligence community too.
How can you have a democracy if you don't know what's going on?
Democracy--that's what we're about. Let's make it transparent.

1 out of 5 people found this comment helpful
ad101867
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 04/10/08 at 9:05 am

toysoldier:

You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Sure, democracy is generally about openness for the sake of the public good. But even in everyday life we don't tell all our secrets to each other. Why would you expect the government to tell all its secrets?

You assume that literally everything there is to know OUGHT to be known by everyone. That's a false assumption. Do you think the public should have access to your bank records, social security info, etc.? Of course not. Why not? For the sake of your own security and legal identity.

Now translate that to whole nations: why would governments want to keep some things secret? For the sake of SECURITY. And this is perfectly rational. Therefore your assumption is NOT rational.

4 out of 5 people found this comment helpful
David.Grindel
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 04/10/08 at 1:40 pm

Come on get a life. Project Blue Book, Area 51 wanna be Trekkies. There are some things that the general public just doesn't have a need to know. If you did & had the clearance maybe we could share something. Live Long & Prosper -- just leave the spooks alone.

1 out of 2 people found this comment helpful
meatpacker
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 04/17/08 at 4:35 pm

Yes, I think that the government should keep things secret, but should'nt they be more careful about thir sonic booms? If they realy wanted to keep things secret then would'nt fly them high enough so that when the sonic boom gets heard its barely audible.

I think the government just wants to spark controversy and get puplicity.

0 out of 3 people found this comment helpful
allpurposedavid
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 05/03/08 at 11:25 pm

Forget airplanes the future of travel is gravity modification! Check out Ben Solomon's book: An Introduction to Gravity Modification www.iseti.us

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emilrules

from Waterloo, Ontario

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 05/04/08 at 8:11 am

yeah

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rangax
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 05/10/08 at 3:44 pm

i agree with that
we need to spend our resources on space travel, not fighting each other
at this rate i dont think earth will last more that couple more decades
and for sure some 1 is gonna drop a n-bomb any day now

0 out of 1 people found this comment helpful
maddenedscientist
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 05/12/08 at 12:07 am

Space Travel would be a wonderful thing. Imagine what we could find! I for one, think intelligent life exists out there. Im Christian, and it just makes sense that if God is infinite, then he can have infinite children, made in his image (or basic appearance and trait-set, in layman's terms). Unfortunatly, for the Earth to be able to seek out new things in planets beyond, it requires us to be unified in that effort. Takes a planet to explore a planet, takes a galaxy to explore a galaxy, etc. basic takes a "___" to *____* a "_____" formula.

0 out of 1 people found this comment helpful
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