Dulce Base -- The Sandia National Laboratories Connection
Dulce Base -- The Sandia National Laboratories Connection
What Sandia Is
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full name | Sandia National Laboratories |
| Location | Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico (primary campus); also Livermore, California |
| Managed by | National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Department of Energy; currently managed by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International |
| Founded | 1945; grew from the Z Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory; became an independent lab in 1949 |
| Mission | Nuclear weapons design and engineering (non-primary physics design; that is Los Alamos's role); nuclear weapons systems engineering; delivery system integration; non-nuclear weapons research; energy research; national security research |
| Budget | Approximately $3.9 billion annually (recent years) |
| Workforce | Approximately 17,000 employees and contractors |
| Physical relationship to Kirtland | Sandia occupies approximately 2,800 acres within and adjacent to Kirtland AFB; the installations are physically integrated |
What Sandia Was Researching in 1979-1980
At the time Paul Bennewitz was observing anomalous lights and signals from his home adjacent to Kirtland/Sandia, the laboratory was engaged in research programs that would produce exactly those anomalies:
High-Energy Laser Research: Sandia and the Air Force Weapons Laboratory (also at Kirtland) were major centers of high-energy laser research. By the late 1970s, research-grade laser weapons were being tested at Kirtland. Laser tests produce intense, visible light in specific directions; atmospheric scattering of laser pulses can produce moving, anomalous light effects visible at distance. This is the most likely explanation for the lights Bennewitz filmed.
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Research: Sandia had an EMP research facility (the HERMES accelerators and related systems) that produced intense, brief electromagnetic pulses. These tests would produce exactly the kind of anomalous radio-frequency signals that Bennewitz's intercept equipment would detect.
High-Power Microwave Research: Related to the laser weapons work, Sandia was involved in high-power microwave systems research -- another source of unusual RF emissions.
Nuclear Weapons Effects Testing: Testing of nuclear weapons effects (blast, radiation, EMP) on various systems produced various anomalous signatures.
The Classified Electromagnetic Environment
Kirtland/Sandia in 1979-1980 was one of the densest concentrations of classified electromagnetic research in the world. For a skilled electronics engineer with intercept equipment -- which is exactly what Paul Bennewitz was -- this environment would have been extraordinarily interesting. He was genuinely detecting anomalous signals. Those signals were genuinely unusual. They were just not alien.
The Security Threat Assessment
When AFOSI assessed Bennewitz as a security threat, the Sandia dimension was central to their concern. A civilian who had demonstrated the ability to intercept signals from a facility engaged in nuclear weapons effects testing, laser weapons research, and EMP research was, in objective security terms, a genuine concern -- regardless of whether his interpretation of those signals was correct.
The AFOSI's decision to redirect rather than silence him can be understood partly in terms of the breadth of the Sandia research programs: identifying all the signals he had intercepted and assessing how much he had actually learned would have been extraordinarily difficult. Redirecting his interpretation was operationally simpler than determining the extent of his actual intelligence collection.
