Showing posts with label Minuteman III. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minuteman III. Show all posts

Friday, July 11, 2025

USAF Security Policeman Sights Orbs Near ICBM Launch Site

USAF Security Policeman Sights Orbs Near ICBM Launch Site - www.theufochronicles.com



     Between 1973 and 2010, I interviewed 167 former/retired US military personnel regarding their nuclear weapons-related UFO encounters. More than a hundred of those accounts were presented in the second edition of my book, UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites. [ad]

Since 2010, I’ve more or less ceased investigating the topic, primarily due to advancing age. Recently, however, another military veteran contacted me after reading a post by Joe Murgia on X (@TheUfoJoe) regarding my work. I was of course interested in what he had to say.

Robert Hastings - www.theufochronicles.com
By Robert Hastings
The UFO Chronicles
7-8-2025
Former US Air Force Security Policeman Devin C. Lingo emailed me and briefly summarized an incident he witnessed while stationed at Malmstrom AFB, Montana, in 1995, involving two orbs maneuvering near a Minuteman-III nuclear missile launch facility (LF).

I asked Lingo to provide me with his DD214 document, which is a Department of Defense record of his military service. It confirmed that he had been stationed at Malmstrom beginning in February 1995, and had been a Security Police/Security Forces member assigned to the 12th Missile Squadron.

Once his bona fides had been established, I called Lingo. He told me,

At the time, I was an Airman, a trainee, preparing to become a full-fledged member of an Alert Response Team (ART). The person supervising my training was an Airman 1st Class named Brent Mullings. Our particular group of ARTs would rapidly respond to alarms at any of the Fox Flight missile sites, to determine whether or not there was a real security threat.

On the day of my sighting, we had six alarms at one LF! That was a record, at least for me, during the years that I worked there. The site was Launch Facility Fox-2, located on Pishkun Road, just west of the town of Choteau, Montana.

The first Outer Zone alarm came in around 6:00 p.m. We quickly proceeded out there to investigate. Our alarms were triggered by the sensors on the IMPSS pole at each site. That’s the Improved Minuteman Physical Security System, which is basically a motion-detection system. Almost all of the time, an alarm was set-off by a wild animal or something like that.

That evening, we discovered a rabbit inside the fence. I tried to scare it away by throwing rocks at it, but it kept hiding inside a culvert. Eventually we left but, over the next several hours, we had to return five more times to reset the alarms.

I asked Lingo why they didn’t just shoot the rabbit. He responded, “The only way we had to kill it was with our duty weapons—M-16 A2 rifles—and that wasn't an option. Had we returned to base after our [shift] and turned-in our weapons to the armory with missing rounds, it would have been a big deal. Also, I personally wouldn't have felt good about killing a rabbit over an alarm.”

He continued,

My orb sighting took place during our last visit, at roughly 4:00 a.m. I had gotten out of the truck and was standing on the site access road. As I was facing west towards the Rockies, in my peripheral vision I saw a small reddish glow in the sky. For a moment, I thought that it might be the Northern Lights.

I turned my head to the right and immediately saw that it was actually a small, glowing object, just hovering there. I couldn’t tell how far away it was. As I was trying to figure out what I was looking at, another object just like it, but blue in color, suddenly appeared. It was to the left of the red one. They were very close together, from my perspective, and at the same altitude. Both seemed to shimmer as if they were energized somehow.

I was stunned! I had no idea what I was looking at. After a few seconds, the red object blinked-out. Gone, just like that. A second or two later, the blue object shot straight up into the sky and instantly disappeared. There was no noise.

During this final alarm of the night, Brent felt sorry for me because I had already conducted the five previous searches, so he decided to run the final one himself. So I just stood there on the LF access road, covering him and giving status-updates to our Flight Security Controller on the two-way radio.

During the time-frame when I noticed the orbs, Brent was doing his detailed search on the LF. His focus would have been on searching the ground within the fence with his flashlight. I’m sure that he didn’t see them.

I was the new guy, the trainee, so I quickly decided that I wouldn’t mention what I saw to Brent, or anyone else. I was afraid that they would think I was crazy. I was worried about losing my PRP.

(RH: Anyone assigned to work with or around nuclear weapons is subject to a Department of Defense directive known as the Personnel Reliability Program, or PRP. An individual whose conduct, on or off-the-job, is judged by his or her superiors to be suspect and, therefore, a potential threat to the weapons, may be ordered to undergo psychological evaluation and risks being relieved of duty. In short, if one wishes to continue working with nuclear weapons while serving in the U.S. Air Force, reporting a UAP is definitely not a good career move. Unfortunately, this situation has undoubtedly resulted in a great many sightings at ICBM sites going unrecorded over the years, something arguably detrimental to US national security.)

Lingo continued,

So, that’s where I left things. I never talked about the incident, but I sure wondered about what I had seen! I don't believe that any other members of my squadron ever mentioned seeing anything strange in the sky. Even if someone had seen something out of the ordinary, there's a high probability that they would never have reported it out of fear of ridicule.

The only other sighting that I'd heard rumors about happened on the east side of Malmstrom, which would have been the 10th Missile Squadron or the 490th Missile Squadron. I was told that sometime during the years prior to 1995, a couple of Security Policemen were at a launch facility when some sort of triangular craft started hovering above them. I don't have any information on how long the encounter lasted or what the fallout was.

Lingo may have been referring to an incident at Alpha Flight, as described to me in 2003 by former Security Policeman Joseph M. Brown. One spring night in 1992, his two-man team, and a second team located a few miles away, observed a bright object erratically racing around the sky for several minutes. At some point, the men became unnerved by what they were seeing and began anxiously discussing the sighting with each other over the radio, whereupon the Alpha Flight Security Controller, who had been listening-in on the tense exchange, broke into the conversation and asked about the situation.

Finally, the aerial object instantly stopped in mid-air and remained stationary. As the sun rose, the craft’s triangular shape could be seen through binoculars. Then it disappeared. When the two teams returned to base, they were debriefed by their commander and pointedly told that any further mention of the UFO would jeopardize their PRP status. This incident is covered at length in my book. [ad]

Lingo said that after leaving the Air Force he had consulted the state-by-state UAP-sighting database at The National UFO Reporting Center website, to learn whether any sighting report in Montana in 1995 might have matched his own.

He told me, “On 9/25/1995 there were two sightings in the towns of Ronan and Polson. One of them states that there were red and blue strobing lights observed. The other just says that the witness saw lights. Both reports stated that the objects were in the eastern sky. Both towns are many miles west of Choteau, at roughly the same latitude, just on the opposite side of the Rocky Mountains. I had been just west of Choteau myself, so what those witnesses reported could have been what I saw. I’ve often wondered whether those sightings related to my incident.”

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Malfunctioning Nuclear Missile and Fear of Accidental Launch (1984)

Air Force Feared Missile Launch - Gadsden Times 10-28-1987
Air Force officials parked an armored vehicle on top of a Minuteman 3 silo in 1984 to prevent what appeared to be the launch of a malfunctioning nuclear missile.... (click and or right click to enlarge image)

     Air Force officials parked an armored vehicle on top of a Minuteman 3 silo in 1984 to prevent what appeared to be the launch of a malfunctioning nuclear missile....
Gadsden Times
10-28-1987

... The guidance system on a Minuteman 3 missile loaded with 3 warheads malfunctioned Jan. 10, 1984.

Monday, January 19, 2009

'Another' Missile Launch Officer Comes Forward and Shares UFO Experience; Requests Others To Do Same

Launch Control Facility (LCF)
The Incident

By Bruce
http://ufo.cordmagic.com/
© 2008

     My first name is Bruce. I spent 20 years in the Air Force. The first nine years I served as an enlisted man and the last 11 as an officer. Initially I was very skeptical about all the “UFO nonsense.” In the fall of 1975 I was a Minuteman III Combat Crew commander on alert with my deputy “Sam” (a lieutenant who had prior enlisted service with TAC units). In order to stay awake that night we monitored radio communication between the topside NCOIC (“Sgt Jones”) and the cops - actually Security Alert Team or SAT. They were on patrol near one of our 10 missile sites which was south about 9 or 10 miles from the Launch Control Facility or LCF.

Sometime around 2 A.M. we heard Sgt Jones ask the two cops to stop the vehicle , look around and report anything that the saw that looked unusual. He gave no hints about where to look or what to look for. The response at first was that they didn't see anything. Then a few seconds later, they reported in an excited voice that they saw a pulsating white thing in the sky. They could see flashing red and blue lights between the pulsations. Jones asked where they saw it. The cops responded that it was to the north about 10 miles and that it looked very close to the main capsule. Now fully awake, Sam and I looked at each other and wondered what was going on. I called Jones on the hot line between us and asked him about the conversation he just had with the SAT. He said that right now above the LCF (100 feet or so) was a white pulsating light with red and blue lights visible between the pulsations. He also said it was shaped like a “fat cigar” and appeared to be about 50 to 60 feet long. He was looking at it while we talked on the phone. Jones reported that it moved away.

Sgt Jones called back in a few minutes and said that it appeared to stop a few miles away - very close to one of the missile sites. We ordered the cops to that missile site but they had to return to the capsule for batteries for their flashlights and other equipment. When they finally headed towards the silo, the pulsating light moved away before they got there. Over the next couple of hours the pulsating light made stops very close to several more missile sites. Each time we tried to send the cops to the site in question. Each time the cops said they had car problems and/or other equipment problems and never actually made it to any of the sites. According to Jones, some time around 4:30 AM it “whooshed away” and turned into a white dot within a few seconds. The white dot stayed in the sky for a few more seconds and then totally disappeared.

While this was going on, during one of our communication checks with all the other launch control capsule commanders in our squadron we mentioned the object and received some chuckles and ridicule. Within a minute or so one of the other commanders called our capsule said that he was told by his topside crew that they had the same sort of lights over their missile sites earlier that night but didn't want to say anything about it in the communications check for fear of ridicule. He said that he had not and would not report the incident to headquarters – again for fear of ridicule. Sam and I reported it to SAC and Warren Control center right after that call and were laughed at and told to call back if it “ate the cops” we had sent to check it out, which of course did not happen as they never got close to the sites. Even though we were laughed at each time we called, we made sure that it was officially reported with about 3 or 4 more calls to the Control center. On the final call we insisted that they include it in their log or we would wake the base commander. I wish we had.

The next morning after our alert we were relieved by a new crew and went topside. Sgt Jones was there curled up in a chair. He was wide awake and still quite upset and scared about his experience. We spent some time talking to him and trying to calm him down. Under promise that we wouldn't report the SAT actions, Sgt Jones also told us that the cops (SAT) were scared to death last night and had decided they were not going to drive to any of the sites that had “that thing” over it under any circumstances. That explained all their vehicle and equipment problems. To this day I am convinced that Sgt Jones believed that he saw something very unusual that night and was sincere in his description of the activity. I did not see Sgt Jones again on any other alert duty.

At the next several crew departure meetings all outgoing crews were briefed that this event never officially happened and not to talk to anyone about it. I did not recognize the individual who briefed us at that departure meeting. As a serviceman who followed orders for 20 years I have had reservations about mentioning this incident.

However, in the past several years I have read about or seen on the Larry King TV show cases where similar incidents have been reported by former military members. A former Missile commander - Robert Salas especially comes to mind. Since skeptics appear to have challenged their integrity as well as their memory I think it is time for all of us that have been silent to talk about what we observed.