According to the Internet, (and we know that everything we read on the Internet is true, right?) there will be a massive invasion of Area 51 on September 20, 2019. What started out as a joke even has the Air Force concerned as it warns the public against the dangers of storming a military facility. But, how are you going to stop 1.5 million people from coming over the fence? And, more importantly, why the heck would they want to invade Area 51?
I’m glad you asked that question.
According to Wikipedia, “Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility located within the Nevada Test and Training Range. Officially, the facility is called Homey Airport (KXTA) or Groom Lake, named after the salt flat situated next to its airfield. Although details of the facility’s operations are not publicly known it is a USAF open training range, and it most likely supports the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems based on historical evidence. The USAF acquired the site in 1955, primarily for flight testing the Lockheed U-2 aircraft.
The intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component to unidentified flying object (UFO) folklore. The base has never been declared a secret base, but all research and occurrences in Area 51 are Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). The CIA publicly acknowledged the existence of the base for the first time on 25 June 2013, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2005, and they declassified documents detailing the history and purpose of Area 51.”
So, it wasn’t publicly acknowledged until six years ago, but it was acquired more than sixty years ago. Does that sound a little fishy to you?
Added to that, in a recent article in Vanity Fair, we are reminded that suddenly Congress is taking the UFO threat seriously. This is an excerpt from their article, “In 2004, two Navy pilots near San Diego encountered what they said was a strange aircraft: “whitish” in color, oval in shape, and capable of accelerating “like nothing I’ve ever seen,” one of the pilots would later tell the New York Times.
“I have no idea what I saw,” the pilot said to a colleague afterward.
That alleged encounter was among the incidents examined by a secret Pentagon program investigating unidentified flying objects, which was established in 2007 at the behest of then-Senator Harry Reid and revealed in a bombshell Times report ten years later. The revelation of a $22 million intelligence program aimed at investigating UFOs was stunning enough. But interest among lawmakers has only seemed to grow since the now-shuttered Pentagon program was revealed, suggesting that the possibility of alien encounters is something the United States government is taking seriously.”
This is the recount of the incident in 2004 from the New York Times :
Cmdr. David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight were on a routine training mission 100 miles out into the Pacific when the radio in each of their F/A-18F Super Hornets crackled: An operations officer aboard the U.S.S. Princeton, a Navy cruiser, wanted to know if they were carrying weapons.
“Two CATM-9s,” Commander Fravor replied, referring to dummy missiles that could not be fired. He had not been expecting any hostile exchanges off the coast of San Diego that November afternoon in 2004.
Commander Fravor, in a recent interview with The New York Times, recalled what happened next. Some of it is captured in a video made public by officials with a Pentagon program that investigated U.F.O.s.
“Well, we’ve got a real-world vector for you,” the radio operator said, according to Commander Fravor. For two weeks, the operator said, the Princeton had been tracking mysterious aircraft. The objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up.
The radio operator instructed Commander Fravor and Commander Slaight, who has given a similar account, to investigate.
The two fighter planes headed toward the objects. The Princeton alerted them as they closed in, but when they arrived at “merge plot” with the object — naval aviation parlance for being so close that the Princeton could not tell which were the objects and which were the fighter jets — neither Commander Fravor nor Commander Slaight could see anything at first. There was nothing on their radars, either.
Then, Commander Fravor looked down to the sea. It was calm that day, but the waves were breaking over something that was just below the surface. Whatever it was, it was big enough to cause the sea to churn.
Hovering 50 feet above the churn was an aircraft of some kind — whitish — that was around 40 feet long and oval in shape. The craft was jumping around erratically, staying over the wave disturbance but not moving in any specific direction, Commander Fravor said. The disturbance looked like frothy waves and foam; as if the water were boiling.
Commander Fravor began a circular descent to get a closer look, but as he got nearer the object began ascending toward him. It was almost as if it were coming to meet him halfway, he said.
Commander Fravor abandoned his slow circular descent and headed straight for the object.
But then the object peeled away. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he said in the interview. He was, he said, “pretty weirded out.”
The two fighter jets then conferred with the operations officer on the Princeton and were told to head to a rendezvous point 60 miles away, called the cap point, in aviation parlance.
They were en route and closing in when the Princeton radioed again. Radar had again picked up the strange aircraft.
“Sir, you won’t believe it,” the radio operator said, “but that thing is at your cap point.”
“We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point,” Commander Fravor, who has since retired from the Navy, said in the interview.
By the time the two fighter jets arrived at the rendezvous point, the object had disappeared.
The fighter jets returned to the Nimitz, where everyone on the ship had learned of Commander Fravor’s encounter and was making fun of him.
Commander Fravor’s superiors did not investigate further and he went on with his career, deploying to the Persian Gulf to provide air support to ground troops during the Iraq war. But he does remember what he said that evening to a fellow pilot who asked him what he thought he had seen.
“I have no idea what I saw,” Commander Fravor replied to the pilot. “It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s.”
But, he added, “I want to fly one.””
If you go to the link, there is a video that shows an encounter between a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unknown object. It was released by the Defense Department’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. (Beware of the inappropriate language used by the surprised men.)
So, has the government been hiding things from us?
An interesting tidbit I came across while researching this Freaky Friday – The United States Government was in full support of the movie Independence Day [1996] offering real military uniforms and even jets until the filmmakers refused to remove Area 51 from the movie. The government withdrew all support.
Then there’s Bob Lazer. According to Wikipedia, Bob’s an American conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed physicist who has claimed to have worked on reverse engineering purported extraterrestrial technology at a site called S-4 located several kilometers south of the Area 51 Groom Lake operating location. Lazar said that the UFO ran on an antimatter reactor that used the (then un-synthesized) element 115 as fuel. He claims to have read US government briefing documents that describe alien involvement in human affairs over the past 10,000 years. Lazar’s claims resulted in bringing the secret site commonly known as Area 51 to the attention of the public. His story gained attention due to a 20 June 2019 interview with Joe Rogan, as well as a 2018 documentary about his life, entitled Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers.
In May 1989, Lazar appeared in an interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS, under the pseudonym “Dennis” and with his face hidden, to discuss his purported employment at “S-4”, a subsidiary facility he claimed exists near the United States Air Force facility Area 51. He said the facility was adjacent to Papoose Lake, which is located south of the main Area 51 facility at Groom Lake. The site consisted of concealed aircraft hangars built into a mountainside. Lazar said that his job was to help with the reverse engineering of one of nine flying saucers. Bob claims one of the flying saucers, the one he coined the Sport Model, was manufactured out of a metallic substance similar in appearance and touch to stainless steel. In a subsequent interview that November, Lazar appeared unmasked and under his own name.
Lazar claims that the propulsion of the studied vehicle was fueled by atomic element 115 (moscovium, first synthesized in 2003) or E115. Lazar explained that E115 generates a gravity wave.
In addition, Lazar claims that during his onboarding to the program, he read briefing documents describing the historical involvement with Earth for the past 10,000 years by extraterrestrial beings, Grey aliens. These aliens are from a planet orbiting the twin binary star system Zeta Reticuli.
Lazar’s story garnered media attention and controversy, as well as supporters. The scientific community, however, is skeptical of Lazar’s claim as he makes them without any hard evidence or proof of what he is claiming. What is undisputed is that Lazar first brought the secret test site popularly known as Area 51 to the attention of the general public.
So, aliens or not? Flying saucers or something easily explainable by the government? (Right, easily explainable!)
I guess there’s a good chance we’ll all find out in September.
Personally, I share the same feelings Hamlet did when speaking to his friend, Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Happy Friday!!!