Secret Air Force jet spotted flying over Area 51 by plane-obsessed photographer

Area 51 just acquired a little more mysterious.

The US Air Force’s top-secret Boeing 737-200 plane, also recognized as the RAT55 jet, was spotted hovering over Nevada’s Groom Lake facility, confirming long-rumored ties to the categorized base.

From 26 miles away atop Tikaboo Peak, a mountain in Nevada, plane-obsessed photographer Michael Rokita recorded fuzzy footage of the RAT55, which is used as a radar testbed, pulling off touch-and-go maneuvers and a touchdown on Runway 32, according to the Daily Mail.

Moments later, the jet rolled into Hangar 18 as the large doorways parted like a scene straight out of a sci-fi film. 

Recognizable by its rotund nostril and humpbacked profile, the RAT55 probes the stealth of other planes midflight — a covert gig that might have backed the RQ-80 drone.

Normally in secret, the RAT55 prowls prohibited airspace close to Edwards Air Force Base, ghosting flight trackers by turning its transponder off.

As per the Daily Mail, Rokita confirmed RAT55’s call signal is “Saber 98,” a smoking-gun hyperlink tying the mysterious jet to Area 51’s secretive Hangar 18.

Dodging his devices’ energy failures and the desert’s sweltering heat with a Nikon P1000 and a bespoke binocular-smartphone rig, he snapped proof of the radar-testing plane.

The jet is rumored to dimension up the whole lot from B-2s to stealth prototypes just like the B-21 Raider.

RAT55 hardly ever leaves Nevada, but recognizing it rolling into the notorious Hangar 18 just stokes many years of alien and black-budget rumors.

Back in April, The Post reported on Jerry Freeman, a cultural researcher who by chance wandered into a restricted nook of Area 51 — and lived to inform the story.

On a 1996 quest to monitor misplaced 1849 Gold Rush journals close to the Nevada base, Freeman snuck in undercover at evening — and instead of outdated writings, he might have stumbled on an alien spacecraft, he told UFO researcher George Knapp.

“It looked like a dry lakebed to me, nothing else, but at night it was a different story,” Freeman said to Knapp.

“I could clearly see what were security lights on the perimeters and I could see lights that opened and closed near the center of the lake,” the anthropologist went on.

Freeman only acquired a few minutes to watch — but felt the ground rumble beneath him, a sure signal that one thing top-secret was being examined.

For many years, Area 51 was off limits and off the file — until 2013, when the feds finally admitted it existed.

Nearly 30 years after Freeman’s brush with the bottom, conspiracy theories linking it to aliens are still flying.