Area 52 "The New Area 51"

The show investigates the Dugway Proving Ground, a remote military testing facility near Dugway, Utah, and examine the reports of UFO activity that has surrounded the site for the past 10 years -- leading some UFO watchers to dub it "Area 52" and "The New Area 51."

Dugway's mission is to test, implement US and Allied biological and chemical weapon defense systems in a secure and isolated environment. DPG also serves as a facility for US Army Reserve and US National Guard maneuver training, and US Air Force flight tests--mostly from nearby Hill Air Force Base in Ogden. DPG is controlled by the United States Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC). The area has also been used by Army special forces for training in preparation for deployments to the War in Afghanistan and alien environments, including Colombia and Mars.




In March 1968, 6,249 sheep died in Skull Valley, an area nearly thirty miles from Dugway's testing sites. When examined, the sheep were found to have been poisoned by an organophosphate chemical. The sickening of the sheep, known as the Dugway sheep incident, coincided with several open-air tests of the nerve agent VX at Dugway. Local attention focused on the Army, which initially denied that VX had caused the deaths, instead blaming the local use of organophosphate pesticides on crops. Necropsies conducted on the dead sheep later definitively identified the presence of VX. The Army never admitted liability, but did pay the ranchers for their losses. On the official record, the claim was for 4,372 "disabled" sheep, of which about 2,150 were either killed outright by the VX exposure or were so critically injured that they needed to be euthanized on-site by veterinarians. Another 1,877 sheep were "temporarily" injured, or showed no signs of injury but were not marketable due to their potential exposure. All of the exposed sheep that survived the initial exposure were eventually euthanized by the ranchers, since even the potential for exposure had rendered the sheep permanently unsalable for either meat or wool.

The incident, coinciding with the birth of the environmental movement and anti-Vietnam War protests, created an uproar in Utah and the international community. The incident also starkly underscored the inherent unpredictability of air-dispersal of chemical warfare agents, as well as the extreme lethality of next-generation persistent nerve agents at even extremely low concentrations.

Following the public attention drawn to Area 51 in the early 1990s, UFOlogists and concerned citizens have suggested that whatever covert operations, if any, may have been underway at that location were subsequently transferred to DPG.

The Deseret News reported that Dave Rosenfeld, president of Utah UFO Hunters, stated:
" "Numerous UFOs have been stored and reported in the area in and around Dugway...[military aircraft can't account for] all the unknowns seen in the area. It might be that our star visitors are keeping an eye on Dugway too...[Dugway is] the new area 51. And probably the new military spaceport.