🇺🇸 United StatesThe Malmstrom AFB Incident
The Story
On March 24, 1967, Air Force Captain Robert Salas reported that guards at Oscar Flight Launch Control Facility saw an orange disc hovering above the front gate. Simultaneously, ten Minuteman ICBMs at Malmstrom went offline with no apparent cause. Salas went public decades later; the Air Force has not fully addressed the claims.
Images
Timeline
Guards report an orange disc; ten Minuteman missiles go offline at Oscar Flight.
Technicians restore missile systems; incident classified.
Captain Salas goes public with his account of the incident.
Known Evidence
How well-documented and physically verified the case evidence is.
- Captain Robert Salas's sworn testimony about the event and missile failures.
- Corroborating testimony from other officers about similar incidents at Malmstrom.
- Documentation of unexplained Minuteman missile shutdowns during the period.
- No official Air Force rebuttal addressing Salas's specific claims in detail.
Unresolved
What We Still Don't Know
- Whether UFO sightings and missile shutdowns were causally linked.
- The technical cause of simultaneous ICBM offline events.
- How many similar incidents occurred at nuclear missile sites.
Hypotheses
Theories
Ranked by plausibility — highest first.
Unrelated Equipment Failure
Missile shutdowns had conventional technical causes coincidental to guard sightings.
Electromagnetic Interference from Craft
An anomalous object emitted EM fields that disrupted missile guidance systems.
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