Click for detail: Fake Town | Fake Airport | Driving Range | Performance Range | Underground Storage | Obstacle Course | Black SUV
The fake town and fake airport are for "real-life" exercises involving urban and airport situations. You can see that there is a simulated half of Air Force One, but not the whole airframe. I've seen a television program where agents were shown practicing various security activities (VIP arriving by airport, bombing in an urban environment).
The driving test range appears to have different kinds of paved street configurations, presumably for practice cornering and turning. The "performance" range, as I called it, is probably for high performance manuevering practice, like "J-turns" (you can even see the turn guide lines painted on the tarmac). It also appears to have a heli-pad.
I'm guessing that point E is some kind of underground storage, perhaps for munitions (especially considering the Jersey barriers obstructing the entrance). The obstacle course is not so obvious, but it's easier to see on Microsoft's Live Map of the location, and it contains a bunch of different swings, pits and balancing obstacles. It looks challenging!
Finally of course, the Black SUV (or maybe it's a van on the day this photo was taken) is present near the intersections of Soil Conservation Road and Powdermill Road.
There are probably other Easter Eggs to find, it just takes some diligent scanning. For example, the old Beltsville Agricultural Center airport is just to the southeast, and I believe the Secret Service uses that for training as well.
By the way, none of this is particularly secret. All these maps and satellite photos are available to the public via Google Maps, and several of the locations listed above were showcased on a recent Sixty Minutes story about the Secret Service.
This map brought to you by GMapEZ and Google Maps.
7 comments:
Wow.
Have you seen any men in suits watching you lately? Because I worry they may be onto you now.
Men in zoots? I'd rather men with suits than men with birthday suits.
If they wanted to keep it secret they would have told Google to blur facility out, and they wouldn't have advertised it on Sixty Minutes.
surely google can't be intimidated by men in suits (insert shocked face here). Google is, like!, the one great truth.
Like god, but with fewer letters and more direct answers.
Sure Google can be intimidated by the MIB. Consider the Google Map of the US Naval Observatory, which is blurred out.
I always thought the One Great Truth was Alex Trebek. Not only does he know all the answers, but he knows all the questions too.
I find it amusing that the satellite view in google maps is so detailed, but then if you switch to just the map view it is utterly void. No such address, as it were.
Right. Nothing to see here. It would be kind of cool if they had labels like "Faketown Road" and "Heli-pad Plaza."
write more!
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