Las Vegas NowI-Team: Inside the Underworld of Black Projects

I-Team: Inside the Underworld of Black Projects

The vast Nevada desert is famous for atom bomb blasts and mysterious military installations. It's been said there's secret stuff out there that could make Star Wars creator George Lucas drool.

Billions has been spent by the government on projects you and I never see.

18 years ago this month, the Air Force rolled out the Stealth Fighter for the public's first look. This reporter even saved his media pass from that day because the plane was, and still is, so cool.

Watch a slideshow of more patches

What we didn't know is that by the time the military unveiled the Stealth to the world, it had already been flying for more than ten years.

Earlier this month, the I-Team watched as the Stealth was retired from service, which raises the question, what new toys are they working on out there?

The answer may lie in patches.

A handful of aviation watchers and a lone TV camera were the only uninvited eyewitnesses earlier this month when the last of the F-117 Nighthawks, better known as the Stealth Fighters, flew into mothballs and into history.

As far as outsiders know, there's nothing else of note going on at the Tonopah Test Range, AKA Area 52. Nothing to see here so move along.

But the mere fact that the Pentagon is retiring one of the premier warplanes in the world speaks volumes to military watchdogs.

"They have technology out here that they are evaluating right now. They say there is almost 30 years advance to what the public knows about. When the Stealth Fighter came out in the late 80's, it was almost 20 year old technology, just to give you an idea of how advanced they are," said Dreamland Resort Webmaster Joerg Arnu.

Stories about futuristic weapons systems being tested in the Nevada desert, at places like Area 51, are staples of aviation magazines. The military doesn't comment, not in so many words anyway, but there are clues.

"It's a glimpse into a $30 billion secret industry," said military author Trevor Paglen.

Paglen collects colorful scraps of fabric, souvenirs from the heart of the black world and has compiled dozens of patches into a new book. They are unit patches, created by outfits you've never heard of, working on projects you may never see. The imagery is menacing: ghosts, skulls, specters and spooks, as if designed by teenage boys.

"There's definitely a kind of Dungeons and Dragons aesthetic to them," said Paglen.

But if you know how to read them, the patches are packed with info.

Many of the patches have collections of six stars, five and one, telling the world that the program, whatever it is, is being tested at Area 51. The lightning bolt is associated with electronic warfare.

One way to guess what they mean is to look back at programs already acknowledged.

"The Grim Reapers is one of the old Stealth squadrons at Tonopah -- Grim Reapers and Nightstalkers. And when those units became public, they had to change their names. Grim Reapers was apparently too satanic for military brass, so they became the Ghostriders," said Paglen.

There are a lot of inside jokes, the acronym NOYFB, a not too polite way of saying butt out. It'll come to you in a minute.

In a nod to the persistent stories about ET's in the desert, there's a patch for MARS, Materials Application Repair Section, whose members were known as Martians. Their job was to repair radar absorbent coatings on stealth planes.

The patch for the Classified Flight Test Unit 509, the same unit involved in the infamous Roswell incident, includes a reference to an old Twilight Zone episode in which aliens ate humans to serve man. One version includes the Latin phrase for tastes like chicken.

"Over and over in this world, you see people have adopted the alien as kind of a mascot. It become an inside joke," said Paglen.

Sometimes the clues aren't obvious until it's too late. The is the patch for the Bird of Prey had a handle of a sword with the same shape of an aircraft which flew at Area 51 for six years and was then retired without ever being publicly acknowledged.

"When they retired the bird of Prey, nobody had ever heard of it before. Then all of a sudden they retired it," said Joerg.

Every one of the patches tells its own story. Many are completely indecipherable: the Minotaur, the Nightstalker, and the Vindicator. In 30 years, maybe they'll tell us what we paid for.

The design of the patches is approved by higher ups so that no secrets are accidentally spilled. Contrary to public perceptions, secrets can be kept and are being kept. We see what they allow us to see.

Email your comments to Chief Investigative Reporter George Knapp