In the early hours of Jan. 14, 2026, Anders Otteson, who runs the Uncanny Expeditions YouTube channel, was camped along Groom Lake Road near the front gate of Area 51, watching for night flights with a thermal camera. He caught a sharply triangular, single-engine jet crossing the restricted airspace. Watchers nicknamed it the “Dorito.”

It wasn’t the only aircraft up. A B-2 stealth bomber worked the area for about four hours that night before heading home to Missouri, according to radio traffic logged by observers. Otteson says the triangle’s trailing edge didn’t match the B-2’s jagged one. The Aviationist notes that distance can distort thermal images and a B-2 can’t be fully ruled out. Scanner listeners also heard an unusual flurry of code words and “Sabre” callsigns, which are usually tied to Groom Lake aircraft. The triangle didn’t seem to talk on open channels.

Aviation writers compared it to a dark flying wing photographed over Wichita, Kansas, in 2014, and to boomerang-shaped aircraft seen over Amarillo, Texas, that same year. Neither was ever identified. Joerg Arnu of the Dreamland Resort website guesses the night may have been a radar comparison test, with the B-2 as a known reference, though he says there’s no direct evidence. The Air Force has not commented.