What really happened at The Dugway facility?

What really happened at The Dugway facility?

UFO, Crashed Stealth Plan or just a Chemical leak? Last week, Dugway Proving Ground, an army testing facility in Tooele County, was on total lockdown while trying to resolve a "serious concern". At around the same time of the lockdown, two people living outside the base witnessed strange red lights hovering over the base, then one of the lights appeared to drop something — a white light was seen coming out of one of the red lights, dropping slowly towards the ground.
Dugway Lockdown
Dugway Lockdown, 26th Jan 2011

UFO, Crashed Stealth Plan or just a Chemical leak?
Last week, Dugway Proving Ground, an army testing facility in Tooele County, was on total lockdown while trying to resolve a “serious concern”. Nobody was allowed in and staff on the base were not allowed out! Some reports even suggest staff who were in their cars about to leave the base at the end of their shift, were ordered to stay in them while the problem was resolved.

The facility was put on lockdown around 5.25pm Wednesday 26th January 2010, and neither Army nor county officials would give a reason why.

Lights add to mystery
At around the same time of the lockdown, two people living outside the base witnessed strange red lights hovering over the base, then one of the lights appeared to drop something — a white light was seen coming out of one of the red lights, dropping slowly towards the ground.

One eye-witnesses managed to grab his phone and record the lights and you can clearly see a light falling towards the ground, but unfortunately the footage is not very clear.

The witnesses said it definitely didn’t look like or sound like an aircraft, the lights didn’t flash and appeared to move very slowly and at one point looked like they were hovering.

Below if a mashup of news reports and witness interviews, including the above mentioned footage of the lights dropping something.

Official explanation
The following day (27th January) the Army issued a statement:

“A missing vial of a nerve agent led to a 12-hour lockdown at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah — less than a quarter-teaspoon of the nerve agent VX was discovered to be missing during an inventory check”

Dugway Proving Ground
Dugway Proving Ground

What is Dugway Proving Ground and what is VX?
Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) is a US Army facility located approximately 85 miles (140 km) southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah in southern Tooele County and just north of Juab County. It encompasses 801,505 acres of the Great Salt Lake Desert, an area the size of the state of Rhode Island, and is surrounded on three sides by mountain ranges.

It had a resident population of 2,016 persons as of the 2000 census, all of whom lived in the community of Dugway, Utah, at its extreme eastern end. The name “Dugway” comes from a technique to dig a trench along a hillside to keep a wagon from tipping.

Dugway’s mission is to test 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 AFB in Ogden. DPG is controlled by the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC). The area has also been used by US Army Special Forces for training in preparation for deployments to the War in Afghanistan.

Dead sheep, Skull Valley 1968
Dead sheep, Skull Valley 1968

“Dugway Sheep Kill” incident
Dugway is perhaps best know (if that is the right word) for an incident that happened in March 1968, where 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.

Alien speculation and experimental aircraft testing – the new Area 51?
Following the public attention drawn to Area 51 in the early 1990s, UFOlogists and conspiracy theorists have suggested that whatever covert operations (if any) that may have been underway at that location (Area 51) were subsequently transferred to DPG.

The Deseret News (Utah’s oldest continuously published daily newspaper) reported that Dave Rosenfeld, president of Utah UFO Hunters, stated:

“Numerous UFOs have been seen 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!

Sources: ABC News, YouTube and good old Wikipedia.

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CW Staff
CW Staff

In the late 80s I started investigating UFOs and crop circles and joined the CCCS (Centre for Crop Circle Studies) and a local group researching strange sightings and reports along the south coast of Dorset (UK). In the early ’90s I started my own research group called SPS (Strange Phenomena Studies), this was renamed in 2004 to Cryptoworld.

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One comment

  1. GI’s at DPG were used as guinea pigs…many have died as recent as 2002. I was there as a NG soldier and most of us got sick there for an ? Reason…Our dear Gov. uses us as trash for experiments both as civilians, or soldiers…Stay well clear of this base…and the Army totally!!!

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