Much of the erstwhile Soviet Union and United States’ defense infrastructure concocted during the tense three-decade span of the Cold War remains relatively purposeless to the general public due to both the governments’ refusal to acknowledge their uses even years onward.
And, whilst the churn for theories keeping in the mind the former might’ve come to a halt due to its non-existence as a sovereign entity anymore, for the latter, speculation continues to be rife through the existence of an old testing facility in the desert of Nevada.
Located beside the Groom Lake, the facility is often deemed ‘Homey Airport’ in official documents and was purchased by the United States Air Force (USAF) to test fighter jets provided by weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
Today, we know the facility by a different name; Area 51.
If you weren’t already familiar with the term despite a panoply of conspiracy theories, documentaries, and television programs that’ve been dedicated to Area 51 in recent history, the events of the past month would’ve certainly piqued interest.
The mysterious facility has undulatingly remained part of a social media frenzy that has seen a petition calling for American citizens to ‘storm’ Area 51 and uncover its supposedly extraterrestrial secrets is now going strong with more than 1.5 million signatures.
As aforementioned, the USAF has always maintained Area 51’s express purpose to be that of testing fighter planes, but doubts have always been cast over the claim due to the noted lack of information about any of the facility’s day-to-day activities, and much of the research conducted within its confines being deemed ‘classified.’
Moreover, given the facility’s location and much of the testing being conducted mainly in the hours of dusk, many planes being flown near Area 51 and surrounding regions have appeared to resemble UFOs to uninformed observers, with a model named the OXCART attracting particular attention because of its titanium body that would reflect the sun’s rays and make it seem unusually bright. Add to this the planes’ manifestly quick speed, and you have the perfect recipe for conspiracy theorists.
Further, in 1996, a man named Bruce Burgess produced a documentary entitled ‘Dreamland,’ in which he claimed employment at Area 51 during the 1950s and having supposedly worked with alien technology that was harvested from crashed UFOs, and even conversing with an alien interpreter.
Burgess’ claims, of course, were never verified.