On March 16, 1967, Captain Robert Salas was stationed in an underground launch control capsule at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana when security guards reported a glowing red object hovering above the front gate. Within minutes, all ten Minuteman nuclear missiles in his flight went offline simultaneously — an unprecedented and supposedly impossible event given the missiles' independent targeting systems. A separate incident at Echo Flight that morning saw all ten of its missiles also go offline. Salas testified before Congress about the incident. The Air Force investigation found the cause was an 'electronic noise pulse' but could not explain its origin. A 2025 Pentagon report attributed the incident to a classified EMP device test.
“A glowing red object was hovering over the front gate. Then our missiles started shutting down one by one. Ten nuclear weapons, all disabled at once. That was no coincidence.”
What they said vs. what the evidence shows
“Rumors of UFOs around the area of Echo Flight during the time of the fault were disproven. A Mobile Strike Team that checked all launch facilities reported no unusual activity or sightings.”
— US Air Force investigation · Apr 1967
SourceFrom “crazy” to confirmed
The Claim Is Made
This is the moment they called it crazy.
On March 16, 1967, the United States military experienced something it had never publicly acknowledged could happen: the simultaneous shutdown of an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons. Captain Robert Salas was on duty in an underground launch control capsule at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana when security guards radioed in with an urgent report—a glowing red object was hovering directly above the front gate.
What happened next would take decades to partially explain.
Within minutes of the sighting, all ten Minuteman ICBMs under Salas's command went offline. Not one. Not two. All ten, simultaneously. The missiles were designed with independent targeting and firing systems specifically to prevent this kind of synchronized failure. A few hours earlier that same morning, a separate flight of ten missiles at Echo Flight had experienced the identical phenomenon. Twenty nuclear weapons, rendered inoperable at the same moment, with no known cause.
Salas reported what he witnessed. The incident gained traction in UFO researcher circles and became a staple of discussions about unexplained military phenomena. For decades, the narrative was straightforward: either UFOs had disabled the weapons, or something genuinely unknown had occurred. In either case, the Air Force's official explanation seemed insufficient.
The Air Force's initial response was to attribute the incident to an "electronic noise pulse," but investigators couldn't identify where this pulse originated or how it had affected systems designed to resist such interference. The explanation satisfied no one—it was vague enough to dismiss the UFO angle while avoiding any real accountability or clarity about what had actually transpired. The incident largely faded from public consciousness, relegated to the fringes of UFO lore.
Then in 2025, the Pentagon released new information that reframed the entire event. According to their findings, the incident wasn't caused by an extraterrestrial craft or an unexplained phenomenon. Instead, the missiles had been temporarily disabled by a classified U.S. EMP device test being conducted in the region. The "glowing red object" remains unexplained in official records, but the simultaneous shutdown of the missiles had a terrestrial source.
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r/UFOs — Captain Robert Salas is a credible witness to the 1967 Malmstrom AFB nuclear missile incident; his continued public testimony and media appearances reinforce the documented UAP-nuclear weapons nexus a
Captain Robert Salas is a credible witness to the 1967 Malmstrom AFB nuclear missile incident; his continued public testimony and media appearances reinforce the documented UAP-nuclear weapons nexus and government acknowledgment of the phenomenon.
This revelation presents an uncomfortable middle ground. The original claim—that a UFO disabled nuclear weapons—cannot be definitively proven true. Yet the government's decades-long insistence on an "electronic noise pulse" of unknown origin was also incomplete. What actually happened was that American military leadership tested electromagnetic weapons technology near an active nuclear weapons facility without proper coordination between commands, resulting in the unexpected deactivation of twenty ICBMs.
The significance extends beyond the specific incident. For over fifty years, military and government officials provided an explanation they themselves knew to be incomplete. Whether this was deliberate secrecy or mere compartmentalization, the public record was inaccurate. Captain Salas and other witnesses had every reason to distrust the official account because it genuinely didn't account for all the facts.
This case illustrates why documented incidents of government statements later proven wrong feed public skepticism about official narratives. The Malmstrom incident wasn't a coverup of alien contact, but it was a coverup of governmental compartmentalization and inadequate communication. In matters of national security, that distinction matters less to public trust than the simple fact: they didn't tell us what actually happened until forced to decades later.
Unlikely leak
Only 11.2% chance this would come out. It did.
Conspirators
~500Large op
Secret kept
59.1 years
Time to 95% exposure
500+ years
