A mysterious, mile-long touchdown strip in the remote Nevada
desert could be the house base for trying out sensors on a pinnacle-mystery
fleet of drones, protection experts speculate.
As visible in pics from Google Earth, the asphalt touchdown
strip is in place 6 of the Yucca Flat take a look at website online, about 12
miles (19 kilometers) northeast of the infamous place 51 that has lengthy been
the concern of conspiracy theories. In area 6, a handful of hangars with
clamshell doorways are clustered at one cease of the airstrip, the Google Earth
images display.
The place, which does now not have a call, is fenced off and
may be visible from the street by means of those traveling the pockmarked
Nevada countrywide security web site of Yucca Flat, in which the army conducted
masses of nuclear tests over several many years. [14 Strangest Sights on Google
Earth]
whilst little is thought about area 6, the Yucca Airstrip is
used by both the department of defense and the department of place of origin
security, Darwin Morgan, a spokesperson for the country wide Nuclear protection
administration, informed the Las Vegas assessment-magazine.
"they come here to check their personal sensors,"
he these days said after evading questions from the newspaper approximately
area 6 for months.
Drone base?
even though officers with the authorities have been
extraordinarily reticent to expose any details about the website, some
information have leaked out.
A 7,500-web page tome on nuclear safety at the Yucca
Mountain nuclear waste mission consists of a short paragraph describing
location 6 as an "aerial operations facility."
“The purpose of this facility is to assemble, function, and
take a look at an expansion of unmanned aerial automobiles. checks encompass,
but aren't constrained to, airframe changes, sensor operation, and onboard
computer improvement. A small, manned chase plane is used to tune the unmanned
aerial automobiles,” according to a 2008 report within the Yucca Mountain
repository license application filed through government contractor Bechtel
SAIC, which built the airstrip for $9.6 million.
The airspace above the strip is managed, which reduces the
chance of planes or satellites in space getting an in depth take a look at the
surroundings. It also prevents the public from by chance stumbling upon the web
site, Morgan instructed the assessment-magazine.
based on its size, the hangars ought to house up to 15 MQ-9
Reaper planes, the sort of drones used to perform reconnaissance, Tim Brown, an
imagery analyst on the protection data website GlobalSecurity.org, informed the
evaluate magazine. The runway is too small for fighter jets or bombers, he
added.
One opportunity is that the remotely piloted planes do
practice runs for reconnaissance paintings. Yucca Flat's excessive wilderness
terrain echoes that located inside the most far off regions of Libya, where Al
Qaeda or ISIS operatives might be hiding out, he stated.
If it really is the case, the government can be trying out
out sensor arrays — basically fields of hundreds of telephone-kind cameras
which are mounted on planes inclusive of the MQ-nine Reaper to take time-lapse
pictures. The concept is that whatever available that is shifting should, in
truth, be moved by a capability terrorist or terrible actor, Brown said.
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