Overview
A new discussion about the decades-old Malmstrom Air Force Base missile shutdown has revived interest in one of the most enduring Cold War-era UFO cases. In an interview with NewsNation’s Ross Coulthart, Kevin Knuth, a physicist at the University at Albany and former NASA Ames researcher, said a UFO-related explanation could help account for reports that intercontinental ballistic missiles were disabled at the Montana nuclear facility more than once.
The Malmstrom incident dates to March 1967, when former Air Force officer and whistleblower Robert Salas later said UFOs were seen over the base and that missile systems mysteriously went offline. The case has remained controversial ever since, with believers pointing to eyewitness accounts and skeptics emphasizing the lack of definitive public evidence tying any aerial anomaly to the shutdowns.
What Knuth is arguing
Knuth told NewsNation that he first heard the story from a professor and later received an account from a relative by marriage who had served in the Air Force and been stationed at Malmstrom. That relative, Knuth said, described the shutdowns as something that occurred “all the time,” suggesting the episode was not as isolated as the public may have assumed.
At the center of Knuth’s comments is a speculative physics-based explanation: that UFOs may be capable of warping space and time. He said such a mechanism could help explain how an object might maneuver at extreme speeds without the destructive inertia that would ordinarily affect passengers or occupants. In his view, if a craft were manipulating space-time, nearby systems could be thrown off as a side effect.
“They might be warping space in some way, because they’re accelerating at incredibly high rates that otherwise the inertia would kill anybody inside,” Knuth said.
Why the missiles may have failed
Knuth also suggested that the missile shutdowns may not have been an intentional attack. Instead, he said the disturbance could have been accidental, with the missile systems themselves being affected by whatever physical process the craft was using to move. According to his explanation, the missiles in their underground silos depend on continuously operating navigation systems so they can be launched quickly if ordered.
“If you start messing space and time, you’re going to mess up the navigation system,” Knuth said. “I don’t think they were trying to shut down the missiles, I think it was an accident.”
That theory stands in contrast to a separate explanation cited in the article: in 2025, the Pentagon said the Malmstrom event was actually caused by a secret test of an electromagnetic pulse device. That official account offers a conventional military-technology explanation, but it has not fully settled debate among UFO researchers, veterans, and skeptics who continue to question the case.
Ongoing significance
The Malmstrom incident remains significant because it sits at the intersection of national security, nuclear weapons history, and UFO folklore. Even as official explanations have emerged, the case continues to attract attention from researchers who argue that military witnesses deserve closer scrutiny. Knuth’s remarks add a scientific framing to that discussion, though his comments are best understood as a hypothesis rather than proof.
For UFO observers, the interview underscores how unresolved Cold War cases continue to shape modern debates about UAP capabilities, especially when nuclear systems are involved. Whether the explanation lies in an undisclosed test, a technical malfunction, or something even stranger, the Malmstrom case remains one of the most persistent questions in the broader UFO file.
