Area 51 The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies
Even if Bob Lazar did see a veritable squadron of circular-shaped UFO-like craft at Area 51’s S-4 facility, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they had to be extraterrestrial. It’s a startling fact that the U.S. government was secretly researching the feasibility of developing such craft in the early 1960s. Taking into consideration that that was almost thirty years before Lazar was even on the scene, an argument can be made that three decades was plenty of time to develop radical, advanced aircraft that looked just like what most people would expect a UFO to look like.
It would also have been plenty of time to make sure that such a craft could fool someone into thinking that they were seeing an alien spaceship. Maybe that’s what happened: Lazar was exposed to highly advanced, terrestrial craft rather than extraterrestrial ones—and, again, as we have seen in other chapters, to try to convince the Russians that we have alien technology when that may not have been the case.
The proof that extraordinary, circular-shaped aircraft were well on the drawing board in the early 1960s can be found in a 1962 document titled “Environment Control Systems Selected for Manned Space Vehicles.” It was a document written by the staff with North American Aviation, Inc., for the Air Force Systems Command at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Notably, a copy of this report was provided to Nellis Air Force Base employees in 1963, demonstrating a link between such documentation, strange craft, and the Nevada Test and Training Range. Certain portions of the document are well worth taking note of, as they make it graphically clear what was going on back in the early years of the 1960s
The document states: “The overall weapon system concept results in a requirement for three basic orbiting components. First, there is a requirement for a manned bombardment vehicle that houses the basic control function in space.
Secondly, a weapon cluster is required. This is an unmanned weapon carrier that combines and integrates several weapons into a common orbiting package to facilitate handling and servicing. The third requirement is the weapon itself. The disc-shaped configuration was chosen for its greater usable volume for weapon storage and crew accommodations and for other advantages [italics mine]. It has a basic diameter of 40 feet and a gross launch weight of about 45,000 pounds. The vehicle functions as a manned orbital bombing system with an internal armament load of four winged reentry weapons and also acts as an orbital control and maintenance center for additional unmanned weapon clusters.”
The document continues: “The operational mission design is 6 weeks duration at a nominal orbital altitude of 300 nautical miles, with a crew of four men. Primarily because of its excellent surface area-volume-weight relationship, the lenticular shape has been chosen as its satellite-reentry configuration for the manned bomber. The basic disc shape is inherently unstable assuming a representative center of gravity location. However, control surfaces, flaps, and speed brakes suitably located and configurations tailoring can make the lenticular shape stable and, with other desirable characteristics, a very satisfactory manned reentry and landing configuration will evolve [italics mine].”
The author of the paper expands further: “The disc-shaped configuration with control surfaces on the aft portion of the vehicle eliminates the problem of high heating due to low shock interactions between conventional fuselage nose and wing leading-edge surfaces. This problem is common to winged body lifting vehicles. The manned bomber requires two separate power systems; one for the boost and reentry phases and another for the normal 6-week orbital operation.
Unfortunately, it is not feasible to provide one system which can supply the energy for both requirements. Energy for the orbital operation can most feasibly be supplied from nuclear or solar sources. The nuclear reactor cannot be activated until the vehicle is in orbit, and on reentry, would probably be left in space to avoid the possible hazards associated with a hot reactor should a crash occur on landing.” Consider very carefully all of the above: in the early years of the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force was planning to have built for them squadrons of advanced aircraft that looked just like the classic image of a flying saucer. Not only that, those same craft were to be nuclear powered, could orbit the Earth for up to one and a half months and to a height of three hundred miles and—given that the document was highly classified—the public and the media would never know anything about it.
On this latter point, it’s worth noting that all of the copies of the document remained hidden behind closed doors until the early 2000s when the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act opened their doors. We should also not forget the significance of just how desirable the disc-shaped aircraft was. For all intents and purposes, the U.S. military was on the verge of having its very own battle-ready flying saucer squadron. They may even have been built and deployed at the time.
Remember, this was the early 1960s. If the technology was up and running then, this raises an obvious question: how many advances had been made by the time Bob Lazar came along in 1988? Maybe many. Perhaps, Lazar was deliberately shown some of them out at Area 51 as part of a strange mind game for reasons that—to a degree—still elude us.