Area 51 F-117 became operational in 1983, operations at Groom Lake have continued. The base and its associated runway system were expanded, including expansion of housing and support facilities. In 1995, the federal government expanded the exclusionary area around the base to include nearby mountains that had hitherto afforded the only decent overlook of the base, prohibiting access to of land formerly administered by the Bureau of Land Management. On 22 October 2015 a federal judge signed an order giving land that belonged to a Nevada family since the 1870s to the United States Air Force for expanding Area 51. According to
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base is a book by American journalist Annie Jacobsen about the secret United States military base Area 51. The book, based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in Area 51, addresses the Roswell UFO incident and dismisses the alien story. Instead, it suggests that Josef Mengele was recruited by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to produce "grotesque, child-size aviators" to be remotely piloted and landed in America to cause hysteria in the likeness of Orson Welles' 1938