The sinister truth about what’s REALLY happening in Area 51

For some, it’s ‘Dreamland’. Others call it the Paradise Ranch. CIA agents prefer the technical designation: Groom Lake or Homey Airport.

But the top-secret US Air Force base in the Nevada desert is best known as Area 51.

The Pentagon only acknowledged the existence of its highly-classified flight testing facility, with its ominous ‘keep out’ signs and armed guards, in 2013.

By then, it was a topic of fascination for alien and UFO conspiracy theorists, and had been featured in everything from Doctor Who to the X-Files and Independence Day.

For those who dress in zany outfits to visit the gates, it’s where US scientists study extra-terrestrial cadavers and flying saucers, and brainstorm space lasers and time machines.

For the rest of us, it’s where the Pentagon test flies next-generation fighter jets.

Joerg Arnu, a military aviation enthusiast, told the Daily Mail: ‘If you want to test something in secret, Area 51 is the place to do it.

‘It’s tucked away in its own valley. Nobody can peek inside unless they climb a very far away mountain top.’

German-born Arnu, 63, lives in the nearby town of Rachel and first visited Area 51 in the 1990s.

He became obsessed with the cutting-edge research being conducted on the other side of the barbed wire.

‘Everybody loves a good mystery. Here, the mystery and my passion for military aviation came together in a perfect storm,’ he said.

But, he added: ‘I have nothing to do with aliens. I leave that to others.’

Here, the Daily Mail takes a look at the ‘most famous top-secret site in the world’ – and the wild theories it inspires about wormholes and little green men.

DREAMLAND FACTS

Area 51, located some 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, takes its unusual name from maps of the Atomic Energy Commission.

The remote, barren site was selected in 1955 to test the U-2 high altitude spy plane. It’s since been used to test the A-12, the stealth F-117 Nighthawk and other warplanes.

The testing program was only revealed in 2013, thanks to a public records request.

Before that, Air Force chiefs merely referred to a ‘variety of activities, some of which are classified’, being carried out in the area. Officials have kept relatively quiet about it since.

The base itself measures just six by ten miles. A much wider area and the airspace above it are permanently locked down.

According to Arnu, researchers there are currently testing sixth-generation F-47 fighter jets.

BOB’S BOMBSHELL

Much of the public interest in Area 51 came from a jaw-dropping televised interview in 1989 when whistleblower Bob Lazar sensationally told KLAS that he had worked at the base with physicists trying to ‘back-engineer a downed alien spacecraft’.

He said the crafts used gravity manipulation and propulsion systems far beyond any technology humans had developed.

While critics dismissed him as a hoaxer, Lazar’s credibility has strangely grown over time.

He described biometric security scanners that didn’t exist publicly until years later. His story never changed. Even some scientists admit: he might have seen something real.

‘Before 1989, just a small group of people came here or even knew about Area 51,’ Arnu said. ‘After Bob Lazar’s story, the genie was out of the bottle.’

ROSWELL DEBRIS

For UFO theorists, Area 51 is where US scientists study downed flying saucers and other alien material.

The most famous of these crashes occurred in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

According to a US Air Force report in the 1990s, the wreckage recovered from Roswell consisted of smashed parts of balloons, sensors and radar reflectors from a classified government project.

But conspiracy maintained that it was a crashed alien spacecraft – and that its remains ended up at Area 51.

At the secret base, the craft and its occupants were examined, and the technology was reverse engineered to enhance America’s own military programs, it is claimed.

The theorists contend that other alien debris has been collected there, and scientists have carried out autopsies of extraterrestrial corpses.

The polling group Ipsos canvassed the public about Area 51 in 2019 and found widespread suspicion about what takes place there.

Just 31 per cent of respondents said they believed it was a regular military base. A quarter of Americans (26 per cent) think that crashed UFO spacecrafts are held there, and 21 per cent think that there is advanced technology from aliens – or aliens themselves.

ALIEN MANIA

Thanks to the notoriety of Area 51, the surrounding area has become a tourism hotspot.

Visitors come from all over for a drive along Nevada State Route 375, known as The Extraterrestrial Highway, and to pose for photographs at the gates of the clandestine facility.

Many gather at the Black Mailbox, a popular meeting spot for UFO hunters, and try the ‘World Famous Alien Burger’ at the Little A’Le’Inn diner.

Arnu recalled a night in the 1990s when he was camping out by Area 51 and nearly caught the alien mania himself.

He described seeing bright lights and what appeared to be a ‘disc hovering in the sky’.

‘I was like: ”Oh, my god, this is the mother ship”,’ he said.

He later realized that it was a military training exercise that involved flares.

Still, it showed Arnu how easily somebody without a military background could see lights in the sky and jump to extraordinary conclusions.

‘I’ve been at the Black Mailbox and I’ve seen people having heartfelt UFO sightings, and I knew full well that what they are looking at is just a commercial airliner,’ he said.

There have been multiple security incidents at Area 51 over the years, involving visitors crossing the security lines and ending up arrested.

The biggest scare occurred in 2019, when millions were expected to attend the ‘Storm Area 51: They Can’t Stop All of Us’ events.

Ultimately, only about 1,500 people showed up for the nearby Alienstock and Storm Area 51 Base Camp music festivals, and just 75 people actually approached the gates of Area 51. Two people were detained by local law enforcement.

CROSSOVER THEORIES

Other theories have emerged about work undertaken at the base that blur the lines between fact and fiction.

To a conspiracy theorist, research into next-generation lasers could look like tech from another planet.

Rumors about a whole range of otherworldly weapons being tested at Area 51 abound, including exotic energy weapons, weather control, time travel and teleportation, and propulsion systems.

‘Technology-wise, Area 51 is 20 years ahead of what we consider state of the art,’ Arnu said.

‘There is most certainly research being done in other fields. Temporal travel, I don’t believe that’s going to ever be a possibility. But energy weapons, sound weapons, crowd control, any of those things, absolutely.’

ALIEN INSIDE JOB

The latest twist about Area 51 is that the wacky alien theories about the site were in reality an inside job, with Pentagon chiefs deliberately fueling conspiracy theories about UFOs to conceal their secret weapons programs during the Cold War.

The disinformation campaign involved dishing out fake photographs of flying saucers in a nearby bar in the 1980s, according to a 2024 Pentagon report obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

The pictures were quickly pinned on the wall, igniting public speculation that alien technology was being housed and studied at the top-secret base.

In reality, Area 51 scientists were testing secret stealth aircraft, which it was hoped could infiltrate Soviet air defenses.

‘It was a very convenient disinformation,’ Arnu said. ‘To muddy the waters, to explain away what somebody might have seen.’