Does anyone know what happens in area 51

Alien enthusiasts descend on Area 51 for an event that started as a joke. The supposed UFO was actually smashed parts of balloons, sensors and radar reflectors from the wreckage of a classified government project meant to "determine the state of Soviet nuclear weapons research," according to a Air Force report. But Area 51 didn't really enter the public conscience until That's when a man named Bob Lazar claimed in an interview with a local news station that he had worked at Area 51 to reverse engineer what he said was a downed alien spacecraft.

Lazar's interview and the claims he made "unveiled this secret base with a big splash," Jacobsen said. So what would we find there? According to Jacobsen, the US does work to reverse engineer technology at Area Today, she said, foreign technology captured on battlefields overseas is brought to Area 51 to be reverse engineered and tested.

Members of the public are kept away by warning signs, electronic surveillance and armed guards. It is also illegal to fly over Area 51, although the site is now visible on satellite images. The base has runways up to 12,ft 2.

The facility is next to two other restricted military areas: the Nevada Test Site, where US nuclear weapons were tested from the s to the s, and the Nevada Test and Training Range. The entire range covers more than 2. According to the US military, it represents "a flexible, realistic and multidimensional battle-space to conduct testing tactics development, and advanced training".

Area 51 was created during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union as a testing and development facility for aircraft, including the U-2 and SR Blackbird reconnaissance planes. Although it opened in , its existence was only officially acknowledged by the CIA in August Although official information is sparse, it is believed that the US military continues to use Area 51 to develop cutting-edge aircraft. About 1, people are believed to work there, many commuting on charter flights from Las Vegas.

From above, they could see it was remote, unassuming, and it already had an airstrip. It was perfect. That's how Area 51 was born. This was Johnson's way of making the arid patch sound more appealing to potential staff. Despite the lack of cultural attractions, nightlife or vegetation, workers embraced the moniker and began referring to themselves as "ranch hands. Area 51 quickly became a favorite location for the CIA's classified airborne espionage ops. But as projects became more technologically complex, the bare-bones facility needed major upgrades.

By , Area 51 was transformed into a fully functional spy-plane factory. Contractors poured a new asphalt runway to accommodate faster planes, replacing the old, 5,foot one with one that stretched 8, feet. Workers delivered disassembled Naval housing units and plane hangars to Groom Lake. Construction crews dug a new water well and erected recreational facilities. They added all the necessary warehousing, shop space and fuel storage.

In a interview with the Seattle Times , former Area 51 contractor James Noce recalled that the food was particularly good in the '60s. Professional chefs hired away from Las Vegas restaurants could make just about anything.

The first plane that was built at so-called Paradise Ranch was the U-2 spy plane. During the Vietnam War, the base was the headquarters for a project to reverse-engineer a Soviet-built MiGF13 plane that a defector pilot surrendered.

Of course, those are just some of the declassified projects we know about. You'll notice that there hasn't been much talk yet of extraterrestrial autopsies or UFOs. That's because those stories hadn't emerged yet… but they were about to.

In the late s and early '60s, calls and letters about UFO sightings trickled in to air traffic control and the Air Force. These reports were, in large part, coming from airline pilots flying from east to west at dusk. Some even believe that the U. For all the myths and legends, what's true is that Area 51 is very real—and still very active. There may not be aliens or a moon landing movie set inside those fences, but something is going on and only a select few are privy to what's happening further down that closely monitored wind-swept Nevada road.

The beginning of Area 51 is directly related to the development of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. After World War II, the Soviet Union lowered the Iron Curtain around themselves and the rest of the Eastern bloc, creating a near intelligence blackout to the rest of the world.

When the Soviets backed North Korea's invasion of South Korea in June , it became increasingly clear that the Kremlin would aggressively expand its influence. America worried about the USSR's technology, intentions, and ability to launch a surprise attack—only a decade removed from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the early s, the U. Navy and U. Air Force sent low-flying aircraft on reconnaissance missions over the USSR, but they were at constant risk of being shot down.

In November , President Eisenhower approved the secret development of a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft called the U-2 program. One of the first orders of business was to track down a remote, covert location for training and testing.

Known by its map designation as Area 51, this middle-of-nowhere site became a new top-secret military base. To convince workers to come, Kelly Johnson , one of the leading engineers of the U-2 project, gave it a more enticing name: Paradise Ranch.

U-2 testing began in July , and immediately, reports came flooding in about unidentified flying object sightings. If you read the details in a CIA report that was declassified with redactions in and subsequently released nearly in full in , it's easy to see why. Many of these sightings were observed by commercial airline pilots who had never seen an aircraft fly at such high altitudes as the U Whereas today's airliners can soar as high as 45, feet , in the mids airlines flew at altitudes between 10, and 20, feet.

Known military aircraft could get to 40, feet, and some believed manned flight couldn't go any higher than that. The U-2, flying at altitudes in excess of 60, feet, would've looked completely alien. Naturally, Air Force officials knew the majority of these unexplained sightings were U-2 tests, but they were not allowed to reveal these details to the public. So, "natural phenomena" or "high-altitude weather research" became go-to explanations for UFO sightings, including in when Gary Powers' U-2 was shot down over Russia.