Background

Captain Robert Salas was the deputy missile combat crew commander at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, in 1967 — responsible for ten Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missiles loaded with thermonuclear warheads.

The Incident

In the early morning of March 24 1967, security personnel at the Echo Flight launch control facility reported a glowing red oval object hovering directly above the launch facility’s front gate. Within seconds, ten of ten Minuteman missiles in Echo Flight transitioned simultaneously from Strategic Alert to No-Go status — a technical failure that base engineers later confirmed they could not replicate or explain.

A parallel incident occurred at the Oscar Flight launch control facility days earlier, witnessed by First Lieutenant Robert Jamison and others. Salas’s superior officer, Colonel Walter Figel, signed off on the incident reports. The full classified Strategic Air Command file remained sealed for decades.

Why It Matters

The Malmstrom shutdown is the single most documented case of a UAP demonstrably interfering with strategic nuclear weapons. Multiple witnesses. Multiple launch facilities. Documented technical failure. Declassified through the Freedom of Information Act. It is the empirical foundation underneath every claim that UAPs interact with nuclear assets — the «hard pillar» that physicist Kevin Knuth and Charles Buhler both cite as undeniable.

Public Disclosure

Salas held his story until 1995 when he came forward through the work of researcher Robert Hastings. In 2010 he organised the Disclosure Project National Press Club event with six other former missileers, all corroborating the same pattern at multiple bases (Malmstrom, Minot, Warren, Vandenberg). The Air Force has never officially explained the incidents.

Sources

• Faded Giant, Robert Salas & James Klotz (2005)
• UFOs and Nukes, Robert Hastings (2008)
• National Press Club, September 27 2010
• Declassified SAC documents via FOIA
• American Alchemy interview (2024)