Not far from Area 51, a facility with a runway appeared out of the desert in 2005 and now the folks in charge of it has acknowledged that the place is being used by “Defense and Homeland Security departments” to test sensor-equipped aircraft.
Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, told Las Vegas Review-Journal that Area 6’s location allows agencies in the Strategic Partnership Program take advantage of the security site’s restricted airspace for their testing programs.
The contractor that built the facility and runway, Bechtel, said in a report back in 2008 that the “purpose of (the) facility is to construct, operate, and test a variety of unmanned aerial vehicles. Tests include, but are not limited to, airframe modifications, sensor operation, and onboard computer development. A small, manned chase plane is used to track the unmanned aerial vehicles.”