Malmstrom Air Force Base UFO incident

Malmstrom Air Force Base UFO incident

A report of a UFO at Malmstrom Air Force Base on March 16, 1967, involved reports of unidentified aircraft that allegedly affected the operational status of missile systems at the base.

Rtd. Captain Robert Salas, a nuclear launch control officer at Malmstrom Air Force Base had his statement about UFOs interfering with nuclear missiles at Malmstrom (the 10 missiles, called a flight went off alert status) covered in many news outlets which mirrored his statements in a National Press Club meeting in 2010, which Stephanie Mercier writing for Vice points out that critics noticed that each of the committee members were being paid $20,000 and all expenses paid for their participation in the hearing. Leslie Kean writes that on the morning of the 24th of March 1967, then first lieutenant Robert Salas, the air force’s nuclear launch control officer stationed at the base for Oscar flight received a call from a frightened security guard who reported that an UFO flying directly over the Oscar Flight Control Center at the base...Salas immediately woke up the first crew commander, First Lieutenant Fred Meiwald...then within minutes of the call, the missiles started to shut down, one by one. Salas said that “they went into no-go while the ufo were overhead...this means that they were disabled, not launchable”. A week earlier, on the morning of March 16, 1967, 35 miles (56 kms) from Oscar Flight, UFOs had visited the echo flight facility and all of its missiles went down too. A declassified document, dated March ‘67, but after the 17th, from Strategic Air Command contains a telex, with the subject heading, “Loss of strategic alert, echo flight, malmstrom afb”. It further reads, “All ten missiles in echo flight at Malmstrom lost strat alert within ten seconds of each other. This incident occurred at 6845L on 16th March 1967. As of this date, all missiles have been returned to strat”. The document further includes the statement, “grave concern to this headquarters”, emphasizes the need for “in-depth analysis to determine cause and corrective action” and highlights the “urgency of this problem” and guarantees “full cooperation and support”.

An analysis into this incident which happened at echo flight was forthcoming as documents revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request at the website, “The Black Vault”. The documents describe the investigation as, “On 16th March 1967 at 0845, all sites in Echo (E) Flight, Malmstrom AFB, shutdown with no-go indication of channels 9 and 12 on Voice Reporting Signal Assemble (VRSA)”. Analysis of channel 50 data from E-7 and E-8 revealed that both sites were shutdown as a result of external influence to the G&C (guidance and control), no no-gos were detected by the G&C. A no-go cause of shutdown for the flight would’ve reflected in channel 50 data. The non-detectable from the G&C which could’ve caused a shutdown would’ve been the loss of confirm codes. An investigation of the logic coupler lead to the conclusion that the possibility of external generated signals causing this shutdown would’ve been very remote, as all 10 couplers would have to fail within seconds of each other. And so would’ve a partial reset of all. Investigations into the cause of the event covered cable connections in the Electric Surge Arrestor (ESA) room, the logic coupler, electric failure at the substation, the transformers, the presence of Boeing Company teams (who came after the incident), commercial power, poor switching, microsecond pulses of square waves in the Sensitive Information Network (SIN) lines, EMP testing in the SIN and Sensitive Command Network (SCN), transformer failure in the stock watering area, the interconnecting box, arcing, burnt areas, tampering and adverse power/electrical effects led to either a negative result or were considered highly remote. Tests also took place at Warren AFB and “D” flight. Rumors of UFOs around the time of the fault were disproven (through questioning air traffic controllers and reviewing RADAR data). A similar incident occurred at Alpha flight in the December of 1966. Echo flight had had issues with electric systems prior to this incident.

After the investigations were concluded, upgrades called “Force Mod EMP modification” took place, many which were the addition of major sub-assembly containing zener diodes, isolation transformers and common-mode transformers for each SIN/SCN pair. Modifications independent of these were to the cable assembly set, by revising the wiring to VRSA channels 26 and 27 and replacing all the batteries by the 14th of October (1967). Further EMP/Electrostatic testing was mentioned and conducted. The investigation documentation concludes with, ***the investigation of the incident could not discover the cause of the incident, but it was believed to be a freak incident***.

Robert Hastings observes that “the Air Force remains entirely silent on the Oscar Flight shutdown, which apparently occurred a few days later”.

Scott Mansch interviewed Robert Salas for the Great Falls Tribune, where he (Robert Salas) states that “I think this was a message, just a message. Because they did not damage the equipment. It wasn’t like they destroyed the weapons. It was just a weapon. I believe we have got to get rid of nuclear weapons because they’re so dangerous.”

Benjamin Radford writing for Live Science, points out that, “if extraterrestrial intelligences have been watching over humanity and are so concerned about nuclear weapons, why didn't they prevent the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II?” (Unless I am mistaken, this seems like the Straw Man logical fallacy, i.e. if the aliens disabled malmstrom's missiles, why didn't they disable the bombs meant for Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Of course, this, my observation, can't be included in the article, because as far as I know there is no response to this comment, but I wish Ben Radford had come up with a better argument, because I have read his book on scientific skepticism).

(I will need assistance in shortening this part below from “Ward Sinclair...spotted the object”, as I’m unsure of how to keep the meaning of the article intact while keeping it concise)

Ward Sinclair and Art Harris writing for the Washington Post describe an incident which took place at Malmstrom Air Force Base on the 7th of November 1975, where an off-duty missile launch officer, by the name of Captain Thomas W. O’brien stated that an aircraft ***resembling*** a helicopter approached the silo area. He and an unnamed deputy were resting in a building when they heard what they ***thought*** was a helicopter rotor. The deputy looked out the window and saw what he described as "the silhouette of a large aircraft hovering about 10 to 15 feet above the ground" and about 25 feet from the launch-area fence.

He reportedly saw two red and white lights on the front, a white light on the bottom and another on the rear. Darkness prevented him from seeing markings or personnel on the object. The object left after a minute or so of hovering, the report said.

Military crews at two other nearby launch facilities reported moving lights in the air on the same evening, but said they heard no sounds.

NORAD commanders' activity logs during that period of time reported another sighting at another unidentifie launch facility in which witnesses said they saw the object "issuing a black object from, it, tubular in shape." Standard radar surveillance provided no clues as to the presence of anything other than known craft in the area.

More detail appeared in reports of sightings on Oct. 30 and 31 over Wurtsmith AFB, where an"unidentified helicopter" flew around the base and hovered over weapons-storage bunkers.

Investigators subsequently determined that ***no military, commercial or private helicopters known to be based in the area could have been around Wurtsmith at those times***. The crew of a KC135 tanker plane, already airborne, spotted the object near the base and attempted to give chase, but couldn't keep up with it.

Several sightings occurred at the Maine air base as well, where objects hovered over the weapons area.Radar and visual sightings were made, and another KC135 was sent aloft to oversee pursuit efforts by a helicopter borrowed from the Maine National Guard -- loring had none of its own.

The object eventually disappeared toward the Canadian border, where Canadian air force jets were on alert. There was no indication whether the Canadian planes spotted the object .

Jacqueline Alemany interviewing Luis Elizondo, the former director of the now defunct AATIP, in a response to her question about luring UFOs/UAPs through nuclear powered aircraft carriers, mentions as a part of his answer that, “Now in this country we’ve had incidents where these UAPs have interfered and actually brought offline our nuclear capabilities. And I think to some they would probably say, well, that’s a sign that whatever this is, is something that is peaceful. But in the same context, we also have data suggesting that in other countries these things have interfered with their nuclear technology and actually turned them on, put them online”.

Additionally, with reference to Post-Project Blue Book U.S.A.F U.F.O activities, Howard Blum reports that that Freedom of Information Act requests show that the U.S. Air Force has continued to catalog and track UFO sightings, particularly a series of dozens of UFO encounters from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s that occurred at U.S. military facilities with nuclear weapons. Blum writes that some of these official documents depart drastically from the normally dry and bureaucratic wording of government paperwork, making obvious the sense of "terror" that these UFO incidents inspired in many U.S.A.F. personnel

Philip.J.Klass writing for the LA Times, observes in a review of the book from which the above excerpt has been taken, that it has many factual errors, including with reference to claims about him.

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