UFOs & Nukes

UFOs & Nukes

The UFO / Nuclear Weapons Connection

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UFOs Reported Near Malmstrom AFB's Nuclear Missile Sites in September 2012

Two V-Shaped Craft Sighted Southeast of Oscar Flight Launch Facility O-03

Also published at UFO Chronicles

On September 19th, at 10:19 pm., the Fergus County, Montana Sheriff's Office received a call from an individual reporting a strange sight in the sky. The key passage in the official log entry reads:

CENTRAL MONTANA DISPATCH ADVISED OF A CALL FROM JENNIFER STYER WHO REPORTED SEEING 2 V-SHAPED OBJECTS WITH ORANGE LIGHTS FLYING VERY LOW NORTHWEST OF ROY. JENNIFER WANTED TO KNOW IF THEY MIGHT BE AIR FORCE AIRCRAFT …

DISPATCH CALLED MALMSTROM WHO STATED THAT THEY HAVE NO AIRCRAFT OUT BY ROY TONIGHT …

The small town of Roy is approximately one mile west-northwest of Malmstrom's Oscar-01 Missile Alert Facility (MAF), and underground Launch Control Center, where two officers electronically monitor ten Minuteman-III nuclear missiles—scattered around the surrounding countryside in subterranean silos—waiting to unleash them, if ever ordered to do so by the President of the United States.

I first learned of recent UFO sightings in north-central Montana when two of them, occurring on September 21st, were posted at the National UFO Reporting Center's website three days later. Because I was scheduled to lecture at the University of Montana on October 9th, I decided to visit the region where the sightings occurred immediately thereafter, to see what might be uncovered. That scouting trip led to the Fergus County Sheriff's Office, where I found the record of Jennifer Styer's call in their blotter.

I then drove to Roy and met with her and some of her neighbors—townspeople and ranchers—who had seen UFOs over the years. Significantly, a number of them told me that Air Force activity—both security patrols and the presence of missile maintenance vans—has dramatically increased in recent weeks.

These persons have lived in or near the town for decades; they know what is routine and what is not. Apparently, this heightened activity began around the time of Styer's sighting of two V-shaped craft flying toward her from the direction of Oscar Flight's O-03 missile site, some four miles distant.

Styer told me,

The sheriff's record is inaccurate. I guess they misunderstood my description of the objects' location. It was about 9:45 at night. I was on Antelope Lane, driving north, when I saw them. My house is 13 miles east of Roy but one of the missile [silos] is northwest of us, not too far away. The two objects were northwest of me, not the town, as it said in the log. They came out of nowhere, so fast! They were right on top of me before I noticed them. But they were big! Each one was a V-shape and had orange lights on each [leg]. I don't remember how many lights because it happened so quickly. [The objects] were very close to each other, moving from the northwest to the southeast. There was no noise that I could hear.

I asked Styer to compare the apparent length of each object to a 12-inch ruler held at arm's length. She thought for a few moments and responded, "Oh, probably a little longer than that. They were large and seemed to be very close to the ground. Three other people south of me, on Valentine Road, saw them too." I will discuss that second sighting, which I discovered actually occurred two nights later, on September 21st, toward the end of this article.

A number of people in and around Roy told me that Air Force jet fighters had begun to appear near the town, dropping flares, in recent weeks. When I mentioned this to Jennifer Styer, she said, "What I saw were definitely not flares. The lights were not falling to the ground, or burning out like a flare. There was no airplane above me. I would have heard it if there was. These lights were attached to objects that were silent, moving in a straight line, and definitely V-shaped."

Illustration by Frank Warren, The UFO Chronicles

A History of UFO Activity at Oscar Flight

If the name Oscar Flight seems familiar, it's undoubtedly due to the now-famous, UFO-related incident that occurred there on March 24, 1967. According to former USAF Captain Robert Salas—one of two Missile Combat Crew members on duty at the time—a UFO was reported to be hovering above Oscar-01, just as most or all of the flight's ICBMs malfunctioned.

Then-Lt. Salas was at his missile-status console in the underground capsule when he received a call from a guard at ground level, saying that a strange, rapidly-moving light had been sighted in the sky. Salas told him to monitor the situation and to report back if there were any noteworthy developments. A short time later, the guard called again and screamed into the phone that a large, glowing, reddish-orange, oval-shaped object had suddenly appeared and was silently hovering over the facility's security fence gate.

Salas quickly woke up the other officer, then-Capt. Frederick Meiwald, who was on his rest break, but before he could tell him about the phone calls with the topside guard, they were both shocked to see multiple warning lights on their consoles indicating that the missiles were dropping off alert status, that is, becoming unavailable for launch. It apparently took nearly a full day to restore them to operational status, requiring the replacement of components relating to the missiles' guidance-and-control systems.

Salas and Meiwald later confirmed being debriefed by an agent from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and having to sign national security non-disclosure statements, promising not to reveal the incident. Each kept his silence until the mid-1990s.

During a tape-recorded telephone conversation in August 1996, Meiwald, by then a retired colonel, told Salas that shortly after the missiles failed—he remembered six to eight, whereas Salas recalls all ten going offline—a two-man Security Alert Team had been ordered into the field in response to an intrusion alarm at one of the Oscar silos.

Salas had forgotten that development over the years so Meiwald provided the details, saying that when the team approached the missile site, they saw a UFO hovering above it. (Meiwald later told me that it had been described as a "bright, flying object at low-level.") Badly frightened, the two men raced back to the launch control facility. Apparently, one of the guards was so shaken by the experience that he couldn't continue his shift and had to be taken directly to the Malmstrom AFB hospital.

Although Meiwald was sleeping when Salas took the two calls from the topside guard and, therefore, cannot personally corroborate the discussions that ensued, he has elaborated on the subsequent UFO-related events at the missile silo in a letter to Salas.

Additionally, during my own May 2011 tape-recorded interview with Meiwald, he again confirmed a UFO-presence during the missile-shutdown incident and said that Salas has reported on it "very accurately."

Furthermore, other Air Force veterans have spoken of the events reported by Salas and Meiwald. One Minuteman missile Combat Targeting Team officer, former Captain Robert Jamison, has stated that he was involved in bringing some of Oscar Flight's ICBMs back online. In an affidavit, Jamison says that all of the targeting teams, including his, were explicitly told by their commander "that there had been some UFO activity that had been messing things up" at Oscar.

According to Jamison, specific instructions had been given to the teams. "They briefed us on what to do," he said, "If we saw a UFO while on the road, we were to report it. If we were at the site and saw a UFO, we were supposed to get into the silo and close the personnel hatch. The guard accompanying us would remain outside and report developments to the base via radio."

In other words, those conducting the briefing were apparently convinced of a UFO connection with the missile malfunctions, and had formulated a plan of action which would provide intelligence about any additional sightings, as well as enhance the safety of the dispatched targeting teams as they worked to restore the missiles to operational status. (One wonders what the guards, who would be ordered to stay outside if a UFO had appeared, would have felt about this arrangement.)

Jamison also provides the date for the incident, saying that it occurred the same night as the well-known Belt UFO sighting, when a glowing, disc-shaped craft reportedly landed in a deep ravine near the town of Belt, Montana, on March 24, 1967—something reported in the local media the next day. Jamison says that he listened to radio chatter about that event while he waited at Malmstrom's missile maintenance hangar for authorization to proceed to Oscar Flight to retarget the stricken ICBMs.

Moreover, according to retired Col. Walter Figel, another UFO had been reported to him eight days earlier—on March 16th—at nearby Echo Flight, just as all 10 of those missiles malfunctioned. Similar to what Bob Salas experienced at Oscar, Figel had been on duty in Echo's underground Launch Control Center when he received a call from a guard posted at one of the flight's silos, saying that "a large, round object" was hovering directly over it. "He was serious but I wasn't taking him seriously," Figel told me.

Nevertheless, a skeptical Figel dispatched two Security Alert Teams to the field to confirm the report; both did, according to tape-recorded statements he made to Salas during a 1996 telephone conversation; in a taped interview with me in 2008, Col. Figel said that "at least one" team saw the UFO. Both interviews may be heard at my website.

In short, the UFO-related, missile-shutdown incidents at Malmstrom's Echo and Oscar Flights, in March 1967, are now credibly established. Considering all of this, the September 19, 2012 UFO sighting by civilian Jennifer Styer, southeast of Oscar's O-03 missile site, is hardly surprising. Indeed, declassified documents and ex-USAF witness testimony confirming intermittent-but-ongoing UFO activity at Malmstrom's and other bases' missile sites are accessible at my website.

Whether or not any of Oscar's ten missiles have been adversely impacted by UFO incursions in recent weeks remains unknown, at least for the moment. Unless some knowledgeable inside source at Malmstrom comes forward, we may never know the answer, one way or the other. (And, by the way, I am not asking any active duty personnel do that, given the almost-certain repercussions relating to their military careers.)

That said, the abrupt, apparently dramatic increase in the number of missile maintenance vans operating in the area, together with Air Force security vehicles—as reported to me by several persons living in or near Roy—strongly suggests that something highly unusual has happened there on one or more occasions during the past month.

Other Recent Sightings within Malmstrom's Missile Field

The two sighting reports posted at the National UFO Reporting Center's website, which prompted me to visit north central Montana, are briefly summarized below. (The time that each occurred has been more accurately established since the initial report.)

Two days after Styer's sighting, on September 21st, shortly after 8:30 p.m. MDT, Dale Uhler and his wife were driving west on U.S. Highway 87, in Judith Basin County. Approximately one mile west of the town of Moccasin, they turned north onto North Star Road (CR 314). At the intersection of Fieldstone Road (CR 306), about two miles north of the highway, they noticed a light in the sky that appeared yellow-orange and bar-shaped. It then morphed into three individual orange lights. The sighting lasted approximately 20 seconds, at which point the display disappeared. The sky was clear and stars were visible. The object was 30 to 35 degrees above the horizon.

Uhler said the "elongated bar-shape" object was horizontally-oriented and appeared as wide as a bar of soap held at arm's length. "I can't explain what it was, just that we saw it," he said, "It was an unexplainable, illuminated object. The purpose of my posting was to see if by chance someone saw something similar." Uhler told me that the unidentified object/lights were "north-northeast" of his position and possibly east of the town of Denton, some 18 miles away.

The exact position of the object will probably remain uncertain. However, if Uhler's estimate of its distance from him is reasonably accurate, it would have been in the general vicinity of Delta Flight, whose Missile Alert Facility D-01 is approximately five miles northeast of Denton. The flight's perimeter extends some 10 miles both north and south of the MAF, therefore, even if the object was not in its immediate vicinity, it would have nevertheless been relatively near one or more of the Delta Launch Facilities, with D-11 or D-02 the likeliest sites, given that their locations were north-northeast of Uhler's position.

Another witness, Ted Meinzen, apparently sighted the same object. However, he and two friends had also observed another strange light the previous night. He told me,

What I saw occurred two nights in a row. The first night, [September 20th], it was a single orange light. The sky was dark and the light just appeared as a stationary glow. It did not move or make a sound. It was there for approximately 30 seconds, then it faded away like it burned out, or someone had used a dimmer switch. We were about 20–30 miles east of Highway 191 on a dirt road called Old Musselshell Trail, on the edge of the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge. We were looking to the west and slightly north from our location.

The second night, the lights appeared in exactly the same spot. The difference being that this time there were several of them. We were sitting in the same spot because we had to return to that location to get cellular service. Anyhow, we were sitting in my truck, so all three of us could make our nightly phone calls home.

I was the first to see the light. I told everyone to look and we watched as a second light appeared next to the first and at the same height. A third appeared and then a fourth. At the time the fourth appeared, the first disappeared, followed by the second, third and fourth. It happened relatively quickly and this is how I remember it, but my friend, ----, may remember it slightly differently—the order the lights went out. My other friend, ----, was on the phone; he saw the lights but was not paying full attention.

There was no sound and no movement on either night. The lights appeared to be far away but I cannot tell you the exact distance. I think they were close to 35 degrees above the horizon. ---- told me the time was 8:37 the first night and 8:47 on the second. He looked at the clock on the dash of the truck.

The time of the sighting on the second night, September 21st, was some five-to-ten minutes after Dale Uhler saw the elongated-bar object with orange lights from a different vantage point, which then disappeared, leaving only the lights. Meinzen's description of the lights rules out military flares, which remain illuminated for 3–4 minutes, glowing erratically before eventually sputtering out, while slowly falling toward the ground.

It should also be noted that if Meinzen and his companions were indeed looking west or west-northwest when they observed the mysterious spectacle, the lights would have been further north than the area comprising Delta Flight—which is where Dale Uhler estimated them to be some ten minutes earlier—and, instead, possibly within the Echo Flight footprint.

Fortunately, I later spoke with a third witness, --- --------, who was much closer to the lights that night. His name had been given to me by Jennifer Styer, who heard about his sighting and, assuming that it had occurred at the same time as hers, on September 19th, provided his phone number.

The witness, and two others, were some 20 miles east of Roy. He told me,

It was on September 21st, at around 8-to-8:30 at night. I had been helping the ----------- family move hay and marked that date on my calendar. Actually, ------ saw the lights first and pointed them out to us. They were round like headlights and orange-colored, all in a row, maybe 200 feet in the sky. Then they went out, all at the same time. Then, a few seconds later, they appeared again, higher up, all in a row. Then they went out for good. They were probably a mile straight north of us. We didn't hear any sounds.

This witness told me that no craft, per se, could be seen; just the lights.

This sighting fits nicely with the other two reports, from Dale Uhler and Ted Meinzen, but may have occurred closer to 8:00 p.m. I say this because if the lights were in fact only a mile or so north of the witnesses, positioned on Valentine Road, some 20 miles east of Roy, they would have been much further east than the object/lights sighted by Uhler to his north-northeast, just after 8:30. Similarly, the orange lights seen by Meinzen and his friends, at 8:47, were described as being west to west-northwest of their position, which would place them much further north than the location reported by the witness located east of Roy.

So, the unidentified object with orange lights was apparently moving around over time. Moreover, it should be obvious that Uhler's description of the object's position north-northeast of him does not provide any information as to how far away it was, just as Meinzen had difficulty estimating the distance to the lights he saw to the west-northwest.

The third witness, who was much closer to the lights, was confident that they were only a short distance north of him. The map below will clarify the situation. Lines-of-sight from the witnesses' positions are indicated but not the distances to the observed lights:

Missile field map showing witness locations (Frank Warren)

Summing up the situation, based on the available evidence, all one can say with certainty is that on September 21, 2012, between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m., at least three widely-separated groups of witnesses observed a bar-shaped object with orange lights (in the Uhler sighting) or a group of orange lights arranged in a row (in the other two) whose locations-over-time placed them directly above, or very near to, Malmstrom's Delta, Echo, and Oscar Flights.

Additionally, as noted on the map, yet another witness, Shelby Buck, may have observed unusual aerial activity later that same night. Buck, who lives in the town of Geraldine, told me, "I think the date was September 21st, but I am not absolutely positive about that. It was around 10 p.m." She had been helping her father move a tractor while seeding winter wheat on his farm four-and-a-half miles north of the town. After-dark agricultural activities are not uncommon, as any farmer will tell you. Suddenly, Buck saw a meteor-like "line of fire in the sky" due east of her, moving rapidly in a northerly direction, parallel with the horizon. It then faded out.

A few seconds later, another flaming streak appeared, also moving to the north, level with the ground. It was somewhat smaller than the first one and also faded out. Approximately 10 minutes after that, two Air Force jet fighters suddenly came into view, north of Buck, moving west-to-east. She said, "It seemed like they were probably already in the area" when the flaming objects appeared, since they arrived shortly thereafter.

Given Buck's location, and the direction of the streaks of light, due east of her, they may have been above Echo Flight or, depending on their actual distance from her, just west or east of it. (The objects could have also been hundreds of miles away, if they were meteors, but Buck's distinct impression was that they were much closer.)

Buck said, "The second flame was in the same area as the first one. They were orange and moving sort of rapidly. The big one lasted half-a-second and the other was [briefer] than that."

These trails of light were clearly not air-dropped military flares, given their short duration, their horizontal movement, and the fact that they were visible several minutes before the two jets made their appearance.

I asked Buck if the objects could have been meteors—commonly called "shooting stars"—but she responded by saying that the fiery objects were somehow different in appearance than the meteors she had seen in the past. Given that she is not certain about the date, this sighting cannot be directly associated with the others reported on the 21st, although it may have indeed been linked to them.

Regardless, it appears that bona fide UFO activity occurred in Fergus County, Montana, during the period of September 19-21, 2012, if not longer. I am requesting anyone having knowledge of these events, or any other UFO sightings near Malmstrom's missile sites located elsewhere in Montana, recent or otherwise, to contact me [ufohastings AT aol DOT com].

Witnesses' names will be kept confidential unless I am authorized to publish them.

In conclusion, the UFO sightings near Malmstrom AFB's missile sites in recent weeks—as reported by civilians living in or visiting the region—represent only the latest chapter in the UFO-Nukes Connection saga. Its well-documented history, as revealed in declassified U.S. government files and military eyewitness testimony, extends back to December 1948. Countless official denials about the reality of the situation have been issued over the years but, sooner or later, this amazing story will break wide open.

Over the past four decades, I have interviewed more than 160 U.S. Air Force veterans regarding their involvement in UFO incidents at nuclear weapons sites. An overview of the key cases is presented in my documentary film; a more comprehensive summary of the UFO-Nukes Connection may be found in my book. Declassified documents relating to some of these incidents are also available.

CNN live-streamed my September 27, 2010 press conference in Washington D.C. During that event, seven retired Air Force officers divulged that UFOs have monitored and even shut down our nuclear missiles for decades.

An article containing the veterans' affidavits as well as a small cross-section of nukes-related documents: The UFOs-Nukes Connection Press Conference

The full-length video of the event: