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Under Soviet Satellites, How Area 51 Hid (And Invented) Secret Craft
An anonymous reader writes "No word yet on alien starships, but now that many Cold War-era Area 51 documents have been declassified, veterans of the secret US base are revealing some of the clever — and surprisingly low-tech — ways they hid futuristic prototypes from prying eyes."
Roofs?
The link in TFA leads to some sort of bogus site - it automatically started downloading a zip file of some sort.
Why was it called Area 51?
If companies the size of National Geographic can't operate without letting hackers in through their adnetworks, they should go out of business.
I didn't get a zip file but I did get a malware alert from Safari. Possibly NG or an ad provider hacked?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One successful method was to hire bald fat scifi geeks to run around naked. The resulting hysterical blindness worked better than a Romulan claoking device.
This is a Harold Clamping parallel, how loons fool themselves. Area 51 could only have been credible alien ship junkyard to a poorly educated lot. Most modern people believe in repeatable, falsifiable observations. Those who don't live with a world view that is arcane, oblivious, and ignorant. As such, why give them the media attention? Do you also laugh at people with Down's syndrome or any other serious challenges? These dudes are parts the modern freak show.
What I want to know is what they did with all the spare organs they removed from Dr. Zoidberg. Come on, open the files!
Monstar L
Am I the only one with a desperate urge to push it over?
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
This sounds a little like what the Allies were doing with operation fortitude - before the dday landings. They build inflatable rubber tanks and artillery - and placed them in locations that made it look like the invasion would be aimed at Calais. Of course then they weren't trying to confuse satellites - but German spotter planes.
It's much easier to hide things in an underground cavern than in a building on the surface.
There are various levels of secret. Classify everything; declassify "low-grade" secrets first.
The base that didn't exist except in the minds of "conspiracy nuts" has been partially admitted to. I wonder what other "secrets" are out there, and where they're hidden. And when will they open Area 51 for tours?
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
or is everything else officially accounted for?
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
They're out to get you. Every one of them. Duck and Cover - but not under the bed 'cos that where the Commies are. Everyone hates you for your freedoms.
IT'S A TARP!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
They moved the mockup planes under cover when Soviet satellites were passing over.
When they supposed that the Soviets were learning about the shapes of the aircraft with infrared from shape the ground shadow left in the hot sun, they made funny-shaped shadows.
That's pretty much the whole article.
Is it just me or is Nat'l Geo running out of things to write about?
-Styopa
Careful clicking on that link...there is a malicious banner ad on the National Geographic website. It doesn't hit every time, but on the first click, I was redirected to a rogue AV download site where anti-malware.zip was downloaded.
Shameless promotion: Mac OS X, FTW!
Another interesting thing about Groom Lake is its status as restricted airspace. If you find R-4808N on the FAA's Las Vegas sectional map (e.g., at http://skyvector.com/ ), you'll see that it covers two things: a large area over the old Nevada Testing Site, where the Department of Energy used to test nuclear weapons, and a big conspicuously square area with a large dry lake bed called Groom Lake smack dab in the center. The fairly large airport that's been built next to and extending onto the lake bed is also not labeled on those maps, despite the fact that various other land features and manmade structures just a few miles away (including in the Nevada Testing Site) are labeled to serve as landmarks to pilots.
Restricted airspace listings (the text versions, to be used in conjunction with various airspace maps, e.g., http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/SUA.pdf ) tell you a few things that provide a mechanism for legally accessing them. For instance, they tell you what hours they are restricted (such as a fixed pattern of hours each week, or by specifically issued FAA notice, etc.), what elevations are restricted, the using agency (the agency for the benefit of which the airspace is restricted), and the controlling agency (whom you would contact to try to get clearance to enter the airspace) in the case of "joint use" airspace.
If you look up R-4808N in the restricted airspace listings, it tells you (a) that the restricted airspace is in continuous operation, i.e., it's restricted 24 hours a day every day; (b) it's restricted at all elevations from the ground up; (c) there is no "controlling agency" listed, meaning the airspace is not joint use; and (d) the using agency is the Department of Energy, meaning that the block of restricted airspace is lumped in with the Nevada Test Site even though the Air Force actually runs the Groom Lake facility. All of these characteristics are fairly unusual as restricted airspace goes, and I've only found one other bit of restricted airspace in the listings that doesn't list a controlling facility (a tiny bit of airspace at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah).
Nellis AFB near Las Vegas manages almost all of the restricted and military operation airspace in that area, and they're the ones who will angrily contact you via radio if you even approach the restricted airspace in that area. The restricted airspace is more of a legal mechanism to deal with pilots who encroach on the airspace after they land, and Nellis AFB will send fighters out to strongly dissuade anyone who comes too close to the airspace even if they don't enter it.
One other thing to note is that the runways at Groom Lake are actually quite busy. There is a restricted access terminal at McCarran (Las Vegas) Airport where some thousand or so people board planes that make trips to and from Groom Lake throughout the day. The flights use the name "Janet" when talking to the tower at McCarran (similar to how a United Airlines flight would be referred to as, e.g., "United 123").
I saw something, it seemed to be in the sky, therefore it was an Unidentified Flying Oject. It was probably a weather balloon. Or a pelican. It could have been some secret CIA spy plane.
I hallucinated an disc-shaped spacecraft full of aliens who flew the 186,000,000,000,000,000 miles from Sirius to give me a prostate exam, they were in a flying saucer.
I was molested by a flying bar hade. No, I'm not crazee.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I know Nevada is a sin-friendly state, with it's gambling and prostitution, but what kind of depraved lunatic would violate a sign?!! I mean really, couldn't someone who is, uh, sign oriented easily find a consensual relationship?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I did RTFA. Cisco is not denying it sold any equipment to China, and frankly, that wouldn't be illegal. Routers pass in and out of China everyday for any number of reasons to be used in industry and administrative applications.
THEY WOULD be complicit if Cisco engineers had gone into China and setup Cisco equipment in a big building that said "Golden Shield Area!" and provided white papers and advisory materials for the censorship and control of a nation. Frankly, I could see this. If Cisco equipment makes up the majority of the firewall, then it might be likely that they were complicit in the censorship. It would be advantageous for the US to see how our international companies cooperate with places like China in this.
Such information would normally be concealed in corporate records, and I think part of the suit is an effort to find some of those documents in terms of discovery.
Righteous anger has it's place but do you actually have any answers? Any suggestions on how to make it better? Unfortunately, as ugly as it is, we currently have the best system of government the world has ever seen. The People have more power and say today in the US than in any country at any time in history.
They went into such pains to hide even a shadow, and yet Soviets obtained blueprints of american supersonic jet, and that is only the one I know of. Talk about management with misguided objectives.
I don't understand why it's so hard for people to understand that the U.S. was testing experimental aircraft (courtesy of Lockheed Skunk Works) at Groom Lake. They just used the Area 51 rumors to fuel the speculation so that if/when people saw the planes they were testing they would come up with some cock-eyed theory as to what it was they saw cause they don't recognize it.
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
Fascinating article. It's always exciting to read how people can use satellite imaging to their advantage - or hide from it!
Rebecca
http://landiscor.com/
He was probably a lower level position at "area 51" and he saw some of the mach-ups used to fool the Soviets. I bet the guys at the base made all kinds of funny models to fool the IR sats - like "Marvin the Martian" type saucers etc. Bob got one look at them - VERY liberally filled in the blanks re:space aliens, blabbed his mouth to whatever whack jobs would listen and the rest is history :D.