Faded Giant: The 1967 Missile/UFO Incidents

Faded Giant (2005) is the book in which Robert Salas, a former Minuteman launch officer, and the researcher James Klotz first set out the case that UFOs shut down nuclear missiles at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, in March 1967. Salas says he was deputy crew commander at Oscar Flight when guards reported a red, glowing object over the gate and the missiles dropped off alert one after another; the book pairs his account with the Air Force's declassified records of the Echo Flight shutdown a week earlier.

The book brought the Malmstrom story to wide attention; Robert Hastings's UFOs and Nukes (2008) and Salas's later books built on it. It is also where the account's main problem begins: the declassified Air Force records describe Echo Flight, and the 341st Strategic Missile Wing history says rumours of UFOs there "were disproven", while no document mentions an Oscar Flight shutdown. In 2025 the Wall Street Journal reported that AARO traced the shutdowns to a secret EMP test, which Salas rejects.

Sources: Wikipedia · Skeptoid · Robert Salas's file · Malmstrom incident record