Area 51 base commander

Well...to my knowledge the base is run as a joint operation between an Air Force BrigGen or Colonel and a GS-15 dude, possible some navy guys too. Bunch of yahoo's skip over from Nellis to dreamland for sight surveys and to test tech on Creech UAV's. Here is a pic I took awhile back during a sortie, it is what it is.




[edit on 9-3-2010 by Blood Eagle]

I have read through the many replies to this post and there is some truth to be had of it and some of it is just stupid. Heres what is known....nothing. Area 51 is top-secret and the only ones carried under the "need to know" clauses are mainly those working there and even some of those people arent even in the loop. My friends after a life of working for a company that deals with a top-secret clearance contracted by the federal government of the United States what I can tell you is this simple... Its not the fact that satellites and aircraft exist that is top-secret it is the information that is collected or not collected by such that is indeed top-secret. I have a wife also in the field and she deals with top-secret information as well, we cannot even talk amongst each other about our lines of work even both having top-secret clearance because we dont have a need to know across projects...You may all speculate as to what you think is beyond the gates at area-51 but i will make you aware that there are engineers that work there 9am-5pm monday through friday that dont even know what is going on, they perform a specific task such as monitoring a particular set of instruments but they dont even know the grand scheme of things so how would you? And as for speculating which branches of service are involved and what companies of the private sector? Well it is obvious that the air force is involved and so is the navy, two of the most technological branches of any armed force global, right here in our own backyard...and as aforementioned lockheed martin, well my friend that is a good assumption but do not forget your good friends at northrup grumman and raytheon...

Originally posted by SmittyPuffs
Good lord this is an incredible amount of ignorance in this thread. It's a military base, people. It has a base commander, just as every other military installation has a base commander. He's a very high ranking official in the United States Air Force. His identity is kept a secret just the same as every other employee. It's not nearly as interesting or out of the ordinary as you may like to believe.

I agree totally.
There are probably anywhere from 1200 to 1800 employees of various contractors at the base working under various shift schedules, etc. and from what we hear, most of the programs are highly compartmentalized even within each contractor.
I tend to believe that almost everything in those programs are mundane and rather boring, defense-related programs, such as newer generations of stealth technologies, newer generations of remotely-controlled platforms such as UAVs, UCAVs, advanced radar cross section tests, etc. etc.
Each employee's job-related info will most likely be so boring to an average layman will be meaningless even to ask.
Despite all this, a segment of the population continues to harbor conspiratorially oriented ideas about Area 51.
A good example is this rather funny and almost hysterical ad-lib interview that took place in 1998 at a public hearing in Las Vegas concerning the Air Force's aquisition request for additional 4000 acres of buffer zone at Area 51.
The interviewer is a well-known conspiracy monger.
What I admire in this unexpected footage of the interview is the range commander's patience while being bombarded by some utterly ridiculous-sounding questions posed by this interviewer. One legitimate issue, however, that the interviewer did bring was the issue of compensation in regards to the illnesses contracted by some workers at the base. All other issues were quite ridiculous-sounding. Nevertheless,the commander who never expected such an "interview" kept his cool and answered them exactly as he was trained to answer.
Here is the rare, unexpected interview which was held extemporaneously during a break time between some speakers who addressed the hearing.
My highest respect goes to this commander. I believe that the interviewer may have ignorantly identified him as the wing commander of DET 3, AFFTC at that time (in 1998) as Bill Percival.
Here is the interview:

www.youtube.com...

Col. Bill Percival (in the 1998 interview) was a wing commander at Nellis Air Force Base, not Groom Lake (Area 51). He was clearly misidentified in the video. The wing commander at Detachment 3, AFFTC, is not from Nellis.

Det 3 is a wing-size organization with more than 500 military and around 50 civilian DoD personnel, as well as upwards of 1,400 civilian contractors. The wing commander reports directly to the Air Force Flight Test Center commander at Edwards Air Force Base, California. Det 3 is the responsible test organization for dozens of classified test programs including high-priority, presidentially directed classified projects.