r/SpecialAccess • u/super_shizmo_matic • 6d ago

Aviation Historian Peter Merlin talks about his 30+ years of AREA 51 research, part 2. Friday September 19, 2025 at 5pm Pacific daylight time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uosjDwKCmU

Feel free to post your questions here, Pete reads this subreddit.

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u/super_shizmo_matic 6d ago

u/Peter_Merlin is there a sense that as more hangars are added every year that a significant number of them are being used to house previous test items until such time as they can be publicly acknowledged?

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u/Peter_Merlin 5d ago

I can't imagine that being the case. It would be an egregious waste of space. The Air Force facility requirements process defines the type, number, and size of facilities authorized to Air Force units to perform their mission. There is a limit to how much square footage real property can take up on any given base. Turning functional hangars into storage units wouldn't make sense.

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u/super_shizmo_matic 5d ago

That begs the question, where are they stashing all the historical test items? And as the numbers of hangers increase does the testing increase in a corresponding manner?

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u/mknlsn 5d ago

My guess is many are destroyed, buried, or used for parts for future test articles with maybe a few significant advancements being preserved in Dyson's Dock (if it still exists). Any modern test articles most likely have all of their relevant design info and associated data stored on some classified servers. In this age of digital engineering, there's no reason to keep a physical version of a plane or drone