Kirtland Air Force Base

LocationMilitary Base

Kirtland Air Force Base

LocationMilitary Base

Kirtland Air Force Base is the Albuquerque home of Sandia and a major nuclear-weapons store, and the base over which Paul Bennewitz believed he was filming alien craft in 1980.

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30-Day Activity6 mentions

Oct 9Nov 7

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Named sources8Rumor2Official doc2Opinion2

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Albuquerque

Probed Analysis

Kirtland Air Force Base covers about 51,500 acres in southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico, and shares its runways with the city's international airport. It is home to the 377th Air Base Wing, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, the Air Force Research Laboratory's directed-energy and space-vehicles directorates, and the headquarters of Sandia National Laboratories. Its underground munitions complex, activated in 1992, is often called the world's largest nuclear-weapons storage site.

The field opened as Albuquerque Army Air Base on April 1, 1941, was named in 1942 for Col. Roy C. Kirtland and supported the Manhattan Project. Its Air Force intelligence officers handled the first green fireball reports in late 1948, dismissing them as flares before calling in the meteor expert Lincoln LaPaz, according to Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt. A 1957 tower report of an egg-shaped object near a runway was classed by Blue Book as a possible aircraft, and the Condon Committee blamed a small plane trying to land at the wrong field. On July 1, 1971, Kirtland absorbed its eastern neighbors, Sandia Base, a former Army nuclear-weapons installation, and Manzano Base, a weapons storage site in the Manzano foothills.

Its best-known UFO episode is the Bennewitz affair. Paul Bennewitz, an Albuquerque businessman, came to believe in 1979 that he was filming alien craft and intercepting their signals over Kirtland, the Manzano storage area and the Coyote Canyon test area, and took his findings to the base in October 1980. An Air Force Office of Special Investigations complaint form signed by agent Richard Doty, released under the Freedom of Information Act in December 1982, recorded reports of unidentified lights over Manzano and Coyote Canyon between August 8 and September 3, 1980. The researcher William Moore said in 1989 that he had passed Bennewitz false information, and Doty later said he had been tasked with feeding fabricated material to researchers, Bennewitz among them. Bennewitz's beliefs grew into the Dulce Base legend.

The Bennewitz story stayed in circulation in 2026, when Doty revisited the operation on the Area52 channel in August. The base's documented UFO record runs from the green fireball inquiry and a 1957 tower report to a 1980 investigative form and an acknowledged disinformation effort; later stories of crash survivors held or killed near the base, including one relayed by the British author Timothy Good, rest on unnamed sources.

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Christopher Sharp

@ChrisUKSharp · Oct 23

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[Retweeted] Jay Stratton reveals in his new book that there was "alien" contact with representatives of our government, and that there is film footage of the event. The encounter famously occurred at Holloman Air Force Base in 1964. Three UFOs approached the base - and ONE landed. It's reported that an NHI (alien) being came out, and made contact with elements of the U.S. GOV (Air Force and CIA representatives). Government insiders confirmed this event to Jay. This is an event @G_Knapp and I...

Disclosure Party

@disclosureorg · Oct 23

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Joe Murgia

@TheUfoJoe · Oct 23

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Preview of DOW-UAP-D181, Unresolved UAP Report, Catalina Island, 1949

ReportAnalyzed

govOct 23, 2026

DOW-UAP-D181, Unresolved UAP Report, Catalina Island, 1949

Department of War3 pagesOct 23, 2026RELEASE-07-FILE-007-DOW-UAP-D181-UNRESOLVED-UAP-REPORT-CATALINA-ISLAND-1949

Percy E. Mackey’s 1949 letter to Kenneth Arnold describes two reported groups of observations over Avalon on Catalina Island: six objects seen singly, followed by four more seen by family members. The attached record card counts six objects and concludes that the information is insufficient for evaluation, with no photographs or physical evidence listed.

War.gov PURSUEunclassifiedOpen Original

Joe Murgia

@TheUfoJoe · Oct 16

social𝕏

(I know that you wrote, "seemingly, confirms." But, as much as I liked reading that, it doesn't confirm anything about Holloman. It's a claim. We need to hear f [Quoted] Jay Stratton seemingly confirms the 1964 Holloman AFB UFO landing with non-human beings case… and that it was filmed: - Around this time, I learned of a major historical UAP encounter and contact event. - I was informed by multiple senior sources that this major event in human history occurred in 1964 and in secrecy at Hollom...

Disclosure Party

@disclosureorg · Oct 16

social𝕏

[Retweeted] Jay Stratton seemingly confirms the 1964 Holloman AFB UFO landing with non-human beings case… and that it was filmed: - Around this time, I learned of a major historical UAP encounter and contact event. - I was informed by multiple senior sources that this major event in human history occurred in 1964 and in secrecy at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. - Three UAP approached the base and one landed on the tarmac. - A non-human being deboarded the craft that landed and interac...

Ross Coulthart

@rosscoulthart · Oct 16

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independent

Deep ingest

Sep 29

Probed ingest of: 16 Alien Bodies Crashed HERE… And We Just Found PROOF

Jesse Michels@JesseMichels

UAP Juan

@planethunter56 · Sep 8

social𝕏

Timothy Good: "According to the Air Force officer the alien creatures had insect-like eyes, like an inverted tear-drop. Supposedly, two creatures who had survived a crash, or crashes, were killed by an Air Force policeman outside Kirtland AFB, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This provoked a phenomenal response by the deceased creatures’ colleagues, who demonstrated the ease with which they could control local weather. Communications were established. The aliens insisted on the return of the two c...