LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — The creator of a website collecting information on all things Area 51 believes the future of military tech is still being tested in the Nevada desert, with the most enigmatic activities occurring inside a secret base tucked inside the secret base.
The more secrecy surrounding Area 51, the more insatiable the public’s appetite for information on the secret Nevada base becomes. Take, for example, the dual raids on homes owned by an Area 51 watchdog 16 months ago, which has since roused the public’s curiosity and has many asking what is flying around out there.
“[If] they don’t want you to see it, you’re not going to see it,” said Joerg Arnu, creator of dreamlandresort.com, a digital gathering place for aerospace enthusiasts, aviation watchers, and some who have worked at the best-known secret base in the world. “They have years and years and decades of experience hiding things.”
Arnu, a naturalized US citizen, caught Area 51 fever over two and a half decades ago, and his website has been a place for users to swap stories, post photos, and make educated guesses about what’s happening in the Nevada desert for 20 years.
The world knows about the past projects born at the Groom Lake facility, including the U2 spy plane, early versions of the Blackbirds, the F-117 Nighthawks, and stealth helicopters. However, readers of dreamlandresort.com often get hints about objects currently zipping through the skies. Users believe there are big secrets that can and are being kept.
“Look at some of the exotic planes, like the Tacit Blue that was developed in total secrecy, was flown in secrecy, then all of a sudden, they put it in a museum and said, yeah, we had this for a while,” Arnu said.
Too much secrecy, however, can sometimes backfire. Area 51 was obscure and largely unknown in the 1980s when the Air Force illegally seized 89,000 acres of public land around the base to hide something. In 1989, 8 News Now put the base on the map with allegations that alien technology was stashed in the Nevada desert base. The designation for Area 51 suddenly disappeared from maps, and the government stopped acknowledging that it existed. That secrecy only fueled more public interest. Since then, tens of thousands of people have made the trek to the desert to check it out.
In the early 2000s, Chuck Clark, an Area 51 watchdog, revealed that the US military had hidden sensors on public land, miles outside the base’s boundaries, meant to warn of anyone approaching. The Joint Terrorism Task Force then raided Clark’s home in Rachel.
It was a harbinger of events to come decades later when federal agents targeted Joerg Arnu’s homes in Rachel and Las Vegas. That 2022 raid saw Arnu and his girlfriend Linda Hellow held at gunpoint, presumably for something that appeared on dreamlandresort.com. However, no one has told Arnu what content crossed that line. He said agents treated him like a hardened criminal or a terrorist, even suspecting, apparently, that Arnu may have had his own security.
“When they came in here, they asked me, ‘Are there booby traps’ in my homes,” Arnu said.
For his part, Arnu said he agreed that the US military needs a location to test secret technology. When 2 million people committed to storming Area 51 in 2019, he opposed the event. However, he said when he sees things from publicly accessible lands, he takes note, adding that the recently unveiled B-21 Raider had some of its systems tested in Nevada skies long before the public knew it existed. Arnu said he believes rumors of an SR-71 spy place successor are likely true, though he is unsure if the new version is called SR-72.
Drones, unmanned warplanes, and jamming technologies are the future of warfare being tested at Area 51 in 2024, Arnu suspects.
“They are flying drones, obviously,” Arnu said. “The Russians and Chinese work on stuff to jam our drones, we work on stuff to jam their drones. The next step is how do we make drone communications more secure.”
According to Arnu, the public is unlikely to see much of the upcoming tech as Area 51 has established an Area 51 of its own in a secluded area, situated to the north of Groom Lake, which is only visible to those with their own satellite.
“The really secret stuff […] they have a whole empty valley just north of Groom Lake, and they have the mountain range where they can pretty much play with anything they want,” Arnu said. “It’s booming out there. Area 51 is not going anywhere.”
The creator of a website collecting information on all things Area 51 believes the most enigmatic activities taking place there occur inside a secret base tucked inside the secret base.