Let's Talk About This Intriguing Object Seen In The Scoot-And-Hide Hangar At Area 51

Private pilot Gabriel Zeifman, who has taken aerial shots of Area 51, also known as Groom Lake, the U.S. Air Force's famous clandestine flight test center in Nevada, as well as other shy installations, in the past and whose flights we were first to report on, grabbed new pictures of the facility on Christmas Day. Zeifman shared his latest batch of images with numerous outlets via a public link, which has drawn new interest in the base. Overall, they are very similar to past images, but they do include a particularly good view of an elongated hangar-like structure, known as scoot-and-hide shelter, which appears to have a strangely shaped object of some kind visible inside. We have received dozens of inquires asking about this object and the shelter that it sits in, so we thought we would address them in a new post.



The structure is not really just a hangar in the traditional sense. Scoot-and-hide shelters help conceal flying test articles from prying eyes, most notably from satellites above. This also provides a site closer to the runway where personnel can perform last-chance checks and troubleshooting, as well as arming any explosives, while the aircraft remains concealed. For tactical aircraft, these types of checks are traditionally done at end-of-runway hammerhead areas on operational air bases, which are fully exposed—Groom also has those areas. Similarly, when the test aircraft lands, the shelter offers a place to quickly get it out of sight where it can be made safe before returning to its own assigned hangar under its own power or shut down and then towed back to its hangar at a more opportune time. It can also use the facility to be quickly turned around for another sortie.



As for what is seen in the latest image showing the inside the open scoot-and-hide shelter, we really cannot say for sure. To our eye, it looks like a very low-slung dagger-shaped object, similar to the low-observable endcaps and some test articles that have been placed atop radar cross-section (RCS) testing poles at RCS test facilities, although this one has a rise towards its rear, which one could speculate may be a cockpit. So, could this object be a similarly shaped stealthy or high-speed test article? It's possible. If it is, it sits extremely low to the ground.



If we are to go down the rabbit hole in regards to the general shape that we think we are seeing here, at least based on the very limited photographic evidence provided, the closest thing we can find with regards to an actual known aircraft is the Martin Marietta X-24B lifting body. You can read all about this late 1960s initiative here. This program initially emerged out of a grander U.S. Air Force-NASA effort focused on exploring the concept of hypersonic lifting body shapes. This research, including the resulting X-24B, would go on to be used to study unpowered aerial vehicle designs capable of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere from space and then landing on a traditional runway, work that later informed the development of the Space Shuttle.





Lockheed was working on plans to do just that via the X-24C—a more powerful outgrowth of the X-24B. It would have been markedly larger than its predecessor and was designed to achieve hypersonic speeds (in excess of Mach 5) at high altitudes using a ramjet or scramjet engine. The L-301 design eventually evolved out of that initiative alongside a number of additional derivatives, before the program was called off due to funding limitations—at least that is what the public record says.

There are unsubstantiated claims that this program actually morphed into a highly classified one, code-named Copper Coast, which flew secretly out of Area 51 during the 1980s. Regardless, certainly, advanced research into hypersonic flight has never fully stopped and there are likely numerous high-speed flight test programs leveraging exotic test vehicles that have occurred at the base over the decades.

Fast forward to today and there are a ton of ideas from decades past that have been re-leveraged as part of the flat out race for hypersonic superiority that was kicked off in the last half of the previous decade and is only maturing now. The shapes that NASA and the Air Force came up with in the 1960s still remain relevant today and have likely been leveraged in additional research. Beyond that, hypersonic parasite aircraft have long been rumored to have been a part of research and development programs at Area 51. That capability has also taken on a new emphasis in the current age of peer competition and we speculate such a mothership-type aircraft that could launch a smaller extremely high-speed aircraft or space-access craft could potentially be intended to call the new tall hangar at the southern end of the base home, if indeed that program is still underway.

When it comes to high-speed experimental planes that may exist today, we also know the Skunk Works was looking to test an F-22-sized hypersonic demonstrator that leveraged combined-cycle engine technology slated for its SR-72 concept as soon as 2018. That is if the option to do so, which supposedly would cost less than $1B to realize according to then-CEO of Lockheed Martin Marilyn Hewson, was executed when it was first openly discussed. That aircraft would have to feature an elongated, dagger-like profile, as well.

Neat.jpg

Looks like a baby Star Destroyer to me!

Looks like a big black arrow.

Everyone who posts in this thread is so dea.....Shit.

Delete Delete...Fuck.

Triangular shaped aircraft have been sighted worldwide for years... even Art Bell, who lived in Pahrump Nevada saw one...

Well SHIT!!!

Mysteries heart attack in 5  4. 3. 2....

Looks like something along the lines of the X-59 Low Boom Flight Demonstrator. Low boom aircraft are highly elongated.

West of the rockies you're on the air.

I’m brave enough.

Which pixel is it?

Tagged to be put on another .gov list

If the door is open during the day, it ain't that important.

I'm not even convinced that it is a vehicle.

Enhance!

looks like the shadow cast on the ground/interior of the hanger as a result of the doors being open and the sun being where it was when the picture was taken.  Looking at the shadows cast on the ground from the exterior of the building just reinforces that.

There is no way in hell to tell with any kind of certainty if there is something there or not.

Way to far away with a grainy picture.

Have some tinfoil on me.

Looks like a small B2 turned sideways. Maybe a b2 drone.

Hypersonic test vehicle. No tic tac... boring.

Attached File

Captured Iranian stealth fighter.

That was my first thought.

Not going to something super cool flying out of one of the most observed places in world (by foreign governments)

Yeah, every fucking time. Enough pixels to make it interesting but not enough to see what it is.

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End weaponized paper airplanes!

Stealth drone parked sideways?

Do you even Steve Austin bro?

Range control has to be annoyed as fuck whenever they see his ADS-B squak.

Kharn

Maybe they just build weird shapes out of plywood and leave them just far enough out that they know someone will see them but not enough to get a good shot of.  I know I would if I worked there.

You can't see the tic tac unless they want you to see the tic tac.

Thanks Germany

Looks like a shadow to me.

Land speeder

This I could not make out anything.

I think its more of an incline to load an aircraft under another one

Aurora

It just the Gray's stopping by to say hi!

Or Skunk Works doing what the do.

You need the camera and the lens it was shot with. It's a new technique, using lasers, from some guys in Virginia.

Kharn

This right here. I like reading that website, but’s it’s a substantial reach to even call that “shape” something physical; I could even believe it’s just a shadow, or some uninteresting shape.

It’s wildly speculative to from some pointy pixels to a secret lifting body vehicle. As much as I enjoy that website, I am honestly unimpressed with this article.

If I ran Area 51, I'd have a group of folks building crazy mock ups of sci-fi shit to leave around just to fuck with people.

Interesting, thought Big Brother took over that observation point this photograph was taken.  Helluva zoom lens

I wonder what is under the ground? As old as that place is, there has to be a subterranean world.

Clearly it's something

That’s cool

Wonder how they would keep people from flying drones over the area to take pics and footage?

Jamming and EMP guns.

Plus I imagine they have enough sensors to hunt you down a disappear you.