ABSTRACT
It's four in the morning, and I'm standing under the metal halide lights of a remote gas station, shivering in the desert cold and staring at a decrepit sign: “Tonopah, Nevada ‘Home of the Stealth Fighter’.” I've driven seven hours through some of the most isolated country in the U.S. to arrive here, and the black plane on the town's welcome sign speaks to the reason why I've come. Tonopah lies on the northern border of the Nellis Range Complex. Encompassing 3.1 million acres and 12,000 square miles of airspace, Nellis is the largest piece of classified real estate in the Western world.
