San Nicolas Island and the Area 51 Connection

An interesting Naval site is the "no civilian access" island of San Nicolas located off the coast of California.

San Nicolas Island

Janet flights to San Nicolas Island

Satellite View

There is also a cable that runs from Pt. Mugu to San nicolas Island

Starts here:
C able Origination
You have to look to the right of the road that branches off from Beach rd. you see a faint line that goes to the ocean. It is a wooden cable trough.


Some documention about the cable line to San Nicolas:
PDF 1
PDF 2
PDF 3
PDF 4







[edit on 23-4-2007 by satcom]

San Nicolas Island is used a lot for bombing and missile tests. So the restricted access signs might be to prevent civilians from messing with unexploded ordinance.

Also, I think they used the island for testing the Lockheed stealth ship, so they are probably running a few unmanned submersable or other such experimental projects in the waters right off the shore there.

SEALs I think also use the island for training. The Janet flights are interesting though. Could be for normal reasons or for more conspiratorial reasons.

Good observation with San Nicolas Island.

Are you referring to underground bases? I found something on this subject a couple of weeks ago. I t freaked me out so much i decided to restrict my time on ATS. I may even leave altogether. I don't kno how i came about it, it kind of popped up and my idle curiosity took over.
It made an impact is all i will say.

Good luck, please don't scare yourself half whitless with all this!
Don't go in too deep. Reminds me of my parents when i was a child saying '' Don't ever dabble in black magic! ''

happinness

happiness: can you elaborate please?

Here is a neat find on the island:
www.enviro-navair.navy.mil...

I agree with the OP that there may be SAP operations on the island. What better location to work than over 50 nm from the coastline? In addition, there is a very long airstrip on the island that can accommodate a wide range of gross weights and roll lengths. The size of the hangars (what is visible from sat feeds) would tell us something about the wingspan of any platforms that would be housed there overnight.

The density altitude, from sea level ops, can help with testing on the first few flights. However, I also understand the winds aloft in that vicinity can be fairly turbulent and high (i.e. over 100 kt sustained at 500+ ft MSL). Does anyone else have information regarding the connection to AFFTC DET 3 or further information on SAPs that may be run from there?

I have more information on what else may have been tested at this location. I was discussing an axisymmetric inlet that has a fore-aft moving inlet spike on a cruise missile that we were familiar with and he stated that he saw a cruise missile, or the like, that was on the island, being tested when he was there within the last 24 months. I showed him an image of the D-21 and asked if it looked familiar, along with other drones I am aware of, and he said it was not them. Any ideas? I understand Point Mugu has drone flight ops in the area on a fairly regular basis and this may be a typical operation. Is anyone familiar with an air breathing drone with a translating inlet spike? Other than D-21 or RATTLRS?

I recently found a patch for the San Nicolas Island outlying landing field. In the image, there appears to be two objects in black in the foreground. Can anyone elaborate on what these depict?

i15.ebayimg.com...

Unless there is an obvious meaning to the image in the patch, my observations are:

There looks to be a sunset behind an island. It appears they're inferring night operations with the moonlight reflecting on the water. There's a tall white object behind the island, which may indicate a missile or rocket trajectory originating from nearby Vandenberg AFB. This may be a recovery location for classified test flights deployed from there.

The lower black object appears to be an aerodynamic shape with a descending flight path angle. The edges appear to be linear. There are what look to be streamlines behind the object as it is "falling", which may indicate it is airborne.

I looked into Outlying Landing Fields and found the Wikipedia link about other F/A-18 practice landing strips on the east coast. This may just be that.

en.wikipedia.org...

Is anyone familiar with this patch and if so, what is being depicted?

That patch appears on this page

Here

There is an email to a gentleman on that page that can probably answer any questions about that particular patch.

Originally posted by happinness
Are you referring to underground bases? I found something on this subject a couple of weeks ago. I t freaked me out so much i decided to restrict my time on ATS. I may even leave altogether. I don't kno how i came about it, it kind of popped up and my idle curiosity took over.
It made an impact is all i will say.

Good luck, please don't scare yourself half whitless with all this!
Don't go in too deep. Reminds me of my parents when i was a child saying '' Don't ever dabble in black magic! ''

happinness

hey happinness can you provide the website that you found that freaked you out. I'm inertested in these kind of subjects.
thank you in advance

Thanks for the idea of contacting the webmaster about the patch. I inquired and he said it came from another contributor and does not know what the patch implies.

hilarious!!

I just heard about this bases 15 mins ago and came on google earth and found it.. took a screenshot

i42.tinypic.com...
i42.tinypic.com...

VERY odd.

Whats underground????\\



[edit on 28-1-2009 by xbranscombex]

[edit on 28-1-2009 by xbranscombex]

Threads on another forum have yielded possible evidence of a Lockheed advanced development effort, with a possible connection to the San Nicolas Island operation:

Why is this at Tonopah?

N623BA

N623BA has in the past been used by the Skunk Works (Advanced Development Programs). A few years back it spent most of its days flying back and forth to San Nicolas Island working on a project.

Additionally, other threads in the ATS forum discuss N623BA flight operations involving DET 3:

N623BA Lands at Groom Lake

Lockheed Martin Flight to Groom Lake

Is there a connection with the contrail event off of the southern California coast on November 8, 2010 and San Nicolas Island? The following article suggests there may be:

Secret United States Test of Foreign Missile Might Explain Mysterious Los Angeles Contrail

No. The contrail turned out to be from a jet airliner bound from Honolulu to Phoenix. A perspective illusion made it look like a missile launch. Someone found the tracking information on FlightAware and took a similar photo of an airplane flying the same route the following day under similar lighting and weather conditions.

I ran across this website about San Nicolas Island done by Naval Base Ventura County:

CNIC Naval Base Ventura County - San Nicolas Island

In the website, they state the following:

1) "SNI maintains a 10,000 foot concrete and asphalt runway that can accommodate an aircraft the size of a C-5."

2) Under the 'Newly Assigned' page, "No one is allowed outside of Nicktown for recreational purposes between 30 minutes after sunset and 30 minutes prior to sunrise the next morning." Why is that?

Originally posted by TAGBOARD
I ran across this website about San Nicolas Island done by Naval Base Ventura County:

CNIC Naval Base Ventura County - San Nicolas Island

In the website, they state the following:

1) "SNI maintains a 10,000 foot concrete and asphalt runway that can accommodate an aircraft the size of a C-5."

2) Under the 'Newly Assigned' page, "No one is allowed outside of Nicktown for recreational purposes between 30 minutes after sunset and 30 minutes prior to sunrise the next morning." Why is that?

I spent eight years on San Nicolas Island full-time living there as a federal civilian DoD and retired in 2006. My time on the island goes back some almost 30 years. I can talk about it in general terms but need to avoid specifics in some cases.

During most of my time there were about 20 or so of us "techies" civilian DoD's permanently assigned with the test range and a number of military and contract civilians support personnel up to about 60 or so in number. Some of the roads were tricky and the terrain rough so the evening hour restriction applied to most of those support people who were janitors, cooks, supply people, etc., who were not authorized in restricted areas and were to stay in town in the evenings for safety reasons. My work station, a tracking site, was outside of town and frequently was there around the clock or at odd hours for test operations. Not too mysterious.

Our runway was huge and was an alternate site for shuttle landing but was never needed for that. We also operated F-4 and F16 target aircraft by radio control that were piloted over from the mainland then unmanned for operations around the sea test range then landed on SNI like on a carrier with with arrestor cables. These operations could be dangerous so much of the island personnel were restricted to "Nicktown" during those ops.

A lot of what was mentioned earlier in the thread was done there as well as ops with some of the military's latest whizz-bang toys. For obvious reasons I can't be too specific about those. I can answer some questions anyone might have and can be somewhat specific about many things. We did have some operations go on a couple of times that even I wasn't supposed to see up close and personal when it was on the deck though I did my regular instrumentations stuff with it while flying. I think I am allowed to mention I was primary tracker on the two successful Hyper-X ops when it was reaching mach 7 and almost mach 10.

The OLF SNI patch I still have a couple goodies around like a wine glass and a shot glass with the patch that was a gift at Xmas for our crew. I never gave it too much thought to more meaning, it just depicts the island and some of our instrumentation kind of caricaturized and not much detail. -Eron

Area 51 is a place there belongs to the US. top government at all. It has nothing to do with the UFO though.

There was a media "open house" at SNI on November 20, 2002. I'd imagine there was little out in sight of prying eyes at that time. Perhaps this would include mitigating inadvertent glimpses inside facilities, that would not be possible by overhead assets.

Media Opportunity for San Nicolas Island

Just submitted this as link as a data point.

Another way of tracking activity at SNI:

Missile Launch Operations from San Nicolas Island, CA

(In the 2011-2012 period) A total of 11 launches took place using four missile types on seven different days.

reply to post by Erongaricuaro


Did you ever see surfers on the island?

I used to surf off of nearby Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands. And I'd do so without stepping foot upon the islands. The surf spots on these islands are not very well known. So... just wondering if SNI ever saw surfers.