The Area 51 Fallacy (Mistaking Secret Military Aviation for Extraterrestrial Activity)

AREA 51

Imagine you are the president of the United States or a top Air Force general. A frantic aide has just burst through your office door. “My God, it’s been confirmed! Our team on the ground has secured the crash site and report that it is definitely an extraterrestrial vehicle of some kind, and the deceased bodies of four alien occupants have been recovered. What are your orders?”

You would have the wreckage and the bodies sent to Area 51, of course. Where else? Everyone knows that’s where the government stashes all visitors from outer space. Area 51 shows up in so many science-fiction books and films and has been a flashpoint for UFO believers for so many years now that it has evolved into something of a comical cliché in pop culture. I won’t be surprised if I turn on my TV one day soon and hear something like this: Lee Harvey Oswald, an alien-hybrid Libra with psychic powers, teleported to a hangar inside Area 51 where his brain was reverse engineered by former Nazi scientists who themselves had been chemically lobotomized by the Men in Black who were actually rogue CIA agents in close communication with fluoride-free extraterrestrials. How did Area 51 become ground zero for weird American myth? What is Area 51? And what really goes on there?

First of all, Area 51 does exist and mysterious things do happen there. No one can deny that. After many years of secrecy and denial, it is now a matter of public record that very unusual things have been going on at this top-secret government base for decades. But aliens on ice? Flying saucers? Reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology? Probably not. Believers in Area 51 mythology get tripped up when they confuse plain secret aviation activity for secret aviation activity involving aliens. They also mistake secret military aircraft for extraterrestrial spaceships.

For such a big secret, an awful lot is known about Area 51. We know, for example, that it is part of a larger US military base located in the Nevada desert, less than ninety miles from Las Vegas. The general area is also called Paradise Ranch and Groom Lake. The US military develops and flies new aircraft there. Many of these flights are conducted at night to enhance secrecy. The CIA also uses the base for the same purpose. One would have thought that “UFO sightings” around a region like this would be expected by everyone, not met with suspicion and runaway imagination.

The list of aircraft now publicly known to have flown at Area 51 includes some revolutionary planes. Amazing flying machines like the U-2, A-12, and the now-famous SR-71 Blackbird flew there in extreme secrecy from the 1950s through the 1990s. These sleek reconnaissance planes were extraordinary both in appearance and for what they could do. The Blackbird family was capable of flying at speeds faster than 2,000 mph and reaching altitudes above 85,000 feet. By comparison, the cruising altitude for a typical modern commercial jet is 35,000 feet, and they usually fly at speeds of less than 600 mph. The SR-71’s Cold War mission was to fly far, high, and fast in order to take photos of Soviet bases and activities on the ground. Even today, it’s difficult not to be impressed by the sleek and futuristic lines of the SR-71. There is one on an elevated display at the San Diego Air and Space Museum that allows visitors to walk under it. The underbelly view makes it very easy to imagine how a layperson fifty years ago might have felt certain that she had seen something from another world if one of these roared overhead shortly after takeoff or was spotted out of a window high above a “normal” plane in flight.

The B-2 Spirit bomber and the F-117 Nighthawk also flew at Area 51 before anyone outside of select military and government channels knew anything about them. The B-2, with its sweeping batwing and tailless design, looks like something a Hollywood special-effects company might have come up with. Seen in flight, from some perspectives, it does not appear to be a conventional plane at all. It can look—surprise!—very much like the stereotypical flying saucer. The F-117 Nighthawk is another bizarre warplane. It has a boxy design with unusual angles and an unexpected rudder-elevator-fusion configuration in the rear. We’ve come a long way from the Wright brothers. How far is anyone’s guess, however, because the strange aircraft that we know flew at Area 51 can only tease us and hint at what we don’t know and what might be flying in secrecy there or at some other base right now.

Some people cite what they say is a high number of UFO-sighting claims around Area 51 as proof or evidence that the government has alien spacecraft there and is operating them or has reverse engineered alien wreckage and built its own. The first problem with this is that seeing unknown aircraft near a secret base that flies secret aircraft is not strange. Another problem is one common to many extraordinary claims like this: unanswered questions are not answers. Not being able to identify or explain what something in the sky is does not warrant jumping to the amazing and outrageous conclusion that it must be a spaceship of extraterrestrial origin. Some people are very critical of the US military for its secrecy and refusal to give straight answers about what it is up to. But what else should we expect? Secrecy is to be expected from secret military and CIA operations. It certainly is not proof of anything having to do with aliens.

Keep in mind that many years may pass between the time new, secret aircraft are first tested at a base like Area 51 and when the existence of that aircraft becomes known to the public. This is how it has been in the past, so why wouldn’t it be true today? I have no doubt that there are strange things being flown in the night skies over America right now, vehicles that would shock those of us who are out of the loop. I suspect that this may be truer today than ever before because of the explosion of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and the impact of the post-9/11 “war on terror.” Tremendous amounts of money and creative thought are being poured into making new, better, and increasingly exotic aircraft. Smithsonian’s Air and Space magazine reports that an estimated 30 to 36 billion dollars per year is being spent on new aviation technologies specifically at Area 51 alone.[69] That works out to be as much as $100 million per day. The UAVs or drones we know about today are weird enough, so imagine all the bizarre designs that are likely being tested right now. At the very least, you can be sure that some very interesting work is going on at Area 51 or somewhere else that we don’t know about. And if you ever catch a glimpse of some of that work in flight on a dark night, you just might suspect that it is something from another world. But that hunch would not make it so.