It is a pond. Black is plastic liner to hold water if fully lined or to preserve the soil banks of the pond. The two black points are on either side of a slope into the pond.
IIRC, China Lake is a USN weapons training/test facility.
If you get as close as maps allows to that tank, I doubt it's guarding anything other than the sand beneath it.
Birds have other things to do. You need watching, after all.
There are multiple tanks over the entire area. You think they are out of commission?
Yeah, they look very old and if you zoom in, there's a lot of what looks like rust on some of them.
There's also boats, a bulldozer, semitrailers, lots of tank chassis parts, cargo containers and other vehicles that don't appear to be moving any time soon.
My guess would be a low-impact training area. Not sure what's in the pit, it's some sort of chemical waste.
Southwest of the pond are some containers and four tanks. Looks like someone is storing stuff out there.
What even more weird beside pond is the mars rover and Nasas’ mars program being on small island in Canada
It looks like it's an operation that is guarding a landing pad.
It's a fuckin crashed UFO dude!
Explosives or munitions testing range.
Thats a fun one to explore on Google earth, lots of interesting things there for sure. Area nearby is called China Lake to start with. There is a naval base nearby and an impressive airport considering its location some F-18's on the pad too.
![What is at these coordinates 35°53'23.0"N 117°40'15.0"W and why is there tanks guarding it? [1440x1856 - 169KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/QP1DZm.jpg){kind=link}
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