Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. It is the world's largest office building by floor space, with approximately 6.5 million square feet, and houses the offices of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the senior leadership of all US military branches.
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Underground Facilities and the DUCC
In addition to its well-known surface structure, the Pentagon is alleged to sit above deep underground facilities of national security significance. An acknowledged underground National Military Command Center (NMCC) exists below the Pentagon, responsible for generating emergency action messages to nuclear forces.
A much larger proposed facility — the Deep Underground Command Center (DUCC) — was first proposed in classified documents dated November 7, 1963 (three weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy). Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara proposed meetings to discuss the construction of a National Underground Command Center. Declassified documents detail two proposed configurations:
- An austere facility with 10,000 total square feet accommodating 40 people, built 3,500 feet below the surface at a cost of over $110 million (approximately $1.1 billion in 2024 dollars).
- A moderate-sized facility with 100,000 total square feet accommodating 300 people at the same 3,500-foot depth, costing $310 million (over $3.2 billion today).
On January 16, 1964, a memorandum from Walt Rostow to McGeorge Bundy stated the DUCC concept should proceed, confirming planning continued into the early Johnson administration. The Joint Chiefs proposed even the austere option was too small. A final classified Bureau of the Budget memorandum — over 40% redacted — also addressed the DUCC.
Conventional sources assert the DUCC was never built. UAP Gerb strongly disputes this, based on firsthand accounts from multiple sources who have described an enormous subterranean facility below the Pentagon. UAP Gerb believes this facility is run by the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology — the same CIA office alleged to have blocked a 2008 material transfer from Lockheed Martin to the AAWSAP program connected to the 1953 Kingman crash.
Crystal City Proximity
The Pentagon is situated near Crystal City, a dense commercial and government district in Arlington that houses eight of the top ten US defense contractors (including Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, L3, Aerojet Rocketdyne) within a small neighborhood. Crystal City is also home or adjacent to multiple FFRDCs including RAND, Aerospace Corporation, Center for Naval Analyses, and Institute for Defense Analyses, and multiple DOD research agencies including DARPA and the Office of Naval Research. UAP Gerb hypothesizes that Crystal City, rather than remote desert locations, is where the majority of UAP unacknowledged special access programs are created, maintained, and kept secure — with any underground facility below the Pentagon serving as the physical nexus.