Visitors to America’s most secretive military base are forced to wear a special kind of eye wear while on site in order to keep sensitive information classified and away from prying eyes.
The special glasses are known as foggles and use a type of frosted glass to ensure that the wearer can only see what appears in front and below them. Any kind of peripheral vision is obscured.
The glasses, which are frequently used by pilots that are learning to fly using just their instruments also appear to be a useful tool when escorting visitors around Area 51 in Nevada, long thought to be country’s most protected and mysterious base.
The Area 51 base in the Nevada Test and Training Range is a secretive off-limits area owned by the US government. Visitors to the base are often forced to wear foggles to avoid seeing classified information and technology
Visitors to the base are forced to wear foggles similar to these until inside a secure building
The frosted eyewear prevents wearers from seeing anything apart from what is directly in from of them and below
The foggles, so called because of their fogged-out wrap-around lenses, have a small bifocal area that allows the wearer a small slither of vision, but nothing can be meaningfully made out at any kind of distance.
The goggles are said to be even more restrictive than the blinkers worn by horses.
For pilots, they obscure all but the instrument panel of the cockpit thereby allowing excellent instrument training to take place teaching airmen not to rely on their senses in order to fly in all types of bad weather conditions.
For those on the ground, however, the goggles also come in a tinted version which further restricts the viewer’s ability to see much of anything. They are provided to all infrequent visitors to the base.
The tight security of the base beyond the buildings is maintained by a fleet of black hawk helicopters that ensure the perimeter fence is secure and work in tandem with a literal army of private security guards according to The Drive.
Workers heading to and from the secretive facility travel in buses where the windows are blacked out, while those arriving by air are flown in unmarked Boeing 737s.
Glasses prevent the base from prying eyes from those who are already on site. Pictured, the base from above
One of the unmarked secretive planes that fly between Las Vegas and Area 51 on ‘Janet’ airlines
A fleet of the passenger aircraft is stabled at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport to ferry workers to the off-limits area in rural Nevada, and anyone who boards one is sworn to secrecy about where they’re going and what they do for a living.
The planes, which don’t carry any company logos – they’re plain white with a red band down the side – are operated by the US Air Force and are often referred to as Janet Airlines because that’s the call sign the planes in it use while in civilian airspace.
It is believed that all Janet Airlines flights fly out of a private terminal at McCarran nicknamed Gold Coast.
From Las Vegas they fly north-west to a place that has what’s widely regarded as the most restricted airspace in the world, the Area 51 base in the Nevada Test and Training Range.
It has been reported that once the Janet aircraft approach this secretive area their call signs change from the likes of ‘Janet 210’ to ‘bones 58’.
But it is once those passengers who are on base that visitors are told to put on their foggles.
Law enforcement guards protect the entrance to Area 51, a secretive U.S. military base believed by UFO enthusiasts to hold government secrets about extra-terrestrials
‘Foggles are put on while onboard the arriving aircraft or bus and are only taken off once inside a secure windowless building,’ The Drive reports.
‘Then, when moving to a destination on base directly related to the individual’s visit, such as a particular hangar where a project is being housed, the foggles go back on.’
Visitors, who may be government contractors, are often asked to wear the foggles when travelling about the base to avoid seeing proprietary information or technology, perhaps from a competitor or secret government program.
Other visitors that may have clearances in one part of the base but may not have authorization in another section of the site. Foggles would once again be required to be worn.
Services to Area 51 operate from a secretive terminal called Gold Coast at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, pictured
Nick Pope who used to investigate UFOs for the British Ministry of Defence, explained to DailyMail.com that Area 51 is the place where some of America’s most hi-tech military hardware is built and tested – but he doubts any of it is extra-terrestrial in origin.
He said: ‘Area 51 exists – it’s part of a military testing range in Nevada – and because of the remote and sparsely-populated location, it’s where various secret prototype aircraft and drones are developed and test flown.
‘The UFO and conspiracy theory community think it’s the place where crashed UFOs are kept and where the US military are trying to back-engineer this alien technology.
‘Sadly, despite the rumors, I’ve seen no evidence that we’ve recovered any extraterrestrial technology.
‘Having been name-checked in movies like Independence Day, Area 51 has become part of pop culture and the secret is out, so if there ever was alien technology at Area 51, I suspect it’s been moved to a location we’ve never heard of.’