Robert Salas

Robert Salas (born 1940) is a retired U.S. Air Force Captain and former missile launch officer, a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy with a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. On 24 March 1967, while on duty in the underground launch control capsule of Oscar Flight at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, he experienced one of the central incidents in UFO history: while security guards reported a glowing red object hovering over the front gate, all ten Minuteman I nuclear missiles of the flight simultaneously dropped into a "No-Go" condition — their launch systems disabled by an unknown mechanism. Salas was subsequently ordered to keep silent.

• Graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, master's in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology
• Deputy missile combat crew commander at Malmstrom AFB
• Retired as a U.S. Air Force Captain
• 24 March 1967: disabling of all ten Minuteman I nuclear missiles of the flight during a UFO sighting over the front gate
• Came forward publicly in 1996 after reading a UFO book by Timothy Good
• Key speaker at Robert Hastings's 2010 National Press Club conference on UFOs and nuclear weapons
• Author of Faded Giant (2005) and Unidentified: The UFO Phenomenon (2014); testified before congressional staff; organised the 2021 military-veterans press conference

For the UAP timeline, Salas is the key witness of the so-called "UFOs-and-nukes complex" — the thesis that anomalous phenomena and U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure repeatedly stand in direct interaction. The 1967 Malmstrom incident is one of the best-documented cases of that kind, and Salas has kept it in the public eye for decades against military pressure and official denials.