UFOs and Nuclear Weapons: Repeated Incidents from Missile Silos to Aircraft Carriers

A nuclear missile system does not normally become "offline" at many positions at once. Each Minuteman sat in its own silo with its own power supply and its own communications line, taking orders from a hardened underground launch-control centre. Ten missiles lose their ready status together only if something hits the layer the whole flight shares. Yet former U.S. personnel from the 1960s and 1970s said that unusual signals appeared just above ground before the missiles lost power or entered a no-launch state.

Those accounts were once pushed outside the national-security story. Later, the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, wrote that it interviewed five former service members who had worked around missile silos at Malmstrom, Ellsworth, Vandenberg, and Minot between 1966 and 1977. Some described UAP near the silos; others described launch-control facilities or missiles being disrupted. AARO has not published a final cause and said more work would follow.