Fergus County sheriff's log sightings (2012)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 10
| Date | 19 September 2012 (logged 10:19 p.m.), with further reports on 20–21 September |
|---|---|
| Place | Near Roy, Fergus County, Montana, within Malmstrom AFB's Oscar Flight missile area |
| Log entry | "2 V-shaped objects with orange lights flying very low northwest of Roy"; Malmstrom said it had no aircraft near Roy |
| Investigator | Robert Hastings, who visited in October 2012 and published in November |
| Other reports | Orange lights in a row seen by three groups on 21 September; increased Air Force activity reported by residents |
| Status | Not officially investigated; no missile effects known |
| Topics | Nuclear & missile sites (topic) |
| People | Robert Hastings, Robert Salas |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 176 |
| Year | 2012 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2012 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
On 19 September 2012 the sheriff's log of Fergus County, Montana, which lies inside the missile field of Malmstrom Air Force Base, recorded a call. The caller reported two low-flying V-shaped objects with orange lights.[1][6] The researcher Robert Hastings found the entry during a visit in October 2012 and publicised it, with related sightings, that November.[1][2] He concluded that "bona fide UFO activity" had occurred in the county, but acknowledged that whether any missiles were affected was unknown.[1]
The report
According to the log, at 10:19 p.m. Central Montana Dispatch passed on a call from a woman who reported "2 V-shaped objects with orange lights flying very low northwest of Roy". She wanted to know if they might be Air Force aircraft. Dispatch called Malmstrom, which said it had "no aircraft out by Roy tonight".[1] The log page was posted as an image on Hastings's site, which no longer serves it.[6]
The caller told Hastings the log was inaccurate. Her account:[1][2]
- Where and when. The sighting was at about 9:45 p.m. while she was driving north on Antelope Lane, near her home about 13 miles east of Roy. The objects were north-west of her, not of the town.
- The objects. Two large, silent craft, each V-shaped with orange lights along each arm, flew close together and low, from north-west to south-east, "right on top of me before I noticed them".
- Their size. She judged each a little longer than a 12-inch ruler at arm's length.
- Not flares. Residents had seen Air Force jets dropping flares in recent weeks, but she said these lights were not falling or burning out. They were "attached to objects that were silent, moving in a straight line".
The missile field
Malmstrom's 341st Missile Wing then operated 150 Minuteman III missiles in groups of ten, called "flights". Each flight's silos are linked by cable to a Missile Alert Facility.[2] Roy lies about a mile west-north-west of the Oscar-01 Missile Alert Facility, which controls ten missiles, and the objects came from the direction of the O-03 silo, about four miles away.[1] Residents of Roy told Hastings that UFO sightings were common there. They said Air Force security patrols and missile maintenance vans had increased sharply from around the time of the sighting.[1][2]
The 21 September lights
Hastings first learned of the area's sightings from two reports posted to the National UFO Reporting Center. He gathered several accounts from the evening of 21 September 2012:[1]
- Near Moccasin. Shortly after 8:30 p.m., a couple driving north of Moccasin saw a horizontal, yellow-orange bar of light that turned into three orange lights and vanished after about 20 seconds. It was perhaps in the area of Delta Flight.
- The wildlife refuge. Three men on a dirt road at the edge of the Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge saw a single orange glow on 20 September at 8:37 p.m. The next night at 8:47 they saw a row of four orange lights appear one by one and go out, with no sound or movement.
- East of Roy. About 20 miles east of Roy, three people moving hay saw orange lights "all in a row, maybe 200 feet in the sky" about a mile to the north. They went out, reappeared higher, and went out for good.
- Geraldine. A woman north of Geraldine, unsure of the date, saw two horizontal streaks of fire moving north, followed some ten minutes later by two Air Force jets.
Hastings argued that the lights were not military flares, which burn for three to four minutes while falling. He placed the sightings above or near Delta, Echo and Oscar Flights.[1]
Later reports
In a follow-up article, Hastings reported later sightings in the same area. A man in Hilger told him that on 1 November 2012 a low military helicopter appeared to chase a small white light east toward Roy. That night a woman south of Roy saw three helicopters sweeping spotlights near Rattlesnake Butte, a mile north of the Oscar-07 silo.[2] In the summer of 2013 the same Hilger witness reported an oval object and a "sparkly, blue-green light", and a resident near Oscar-07 described an oblong blue object that split in two.[2]
Malmstrom history
Hastings and others link such reports to the March 1967 incidents at Malmstrom:[1][2]
- Oscar Flight. The former missile officer Robert Salas says that on 24 March, at Oscar-01 near Roy, missiles dropped off alert while a glowing red-orange object hovered at the gate. His crewmate Frederick Meiwald recalled six to eight missiles, where Salas recalls ten.
- Echo Flight. On 16 March all ten missiles at Echo Flight shut down. The officer Walter Figel later said a guard had reported a "large, round object" over a silo.
- November 1975. NORAD logs record lights over Malmstrom missile sites and F-106 scrambles.
The 1967 claims are disputed. A contemporary Air Force report on the Echo shutdown said rumours of UFOs "were disproven".[3] The skeptics Brian Dunning and Robert Sheaffer argued that Salas's memories conflict with wing records, and that the Oscar sighting was probably Mars with no missiles lost.[3] In 2025 a Pentagon report attributed the Echo Flight shutdown to a classified test of an electromagnetic pulse device.[3] A 17 March 1967 Air Force teletype on the "loss of strategic alert", once posted by Hastings, is no longer online.[7]
Hastings has promoted the "UFO–nukes" connection since his 2008 book UFOs and Nukes. In September 2010 he and Salas presented six veterans at the National Press Club in Washington.[3][4] Their claims included UFO activity at Walker AFB, New Mexico, whose 579th Strategic Missile Squadron operated twelve Atlas F sites around Roswell.[5]
Assessment
The 2012 reports were not officially investigated, and the blotter entry itself is brief.[1] Several things are uncertain. Most witnesses saw orange lights at night, the area had recent military flights with flares and helicopters, and distances and dates are unclear in several accounts.[1][2] No effect on any missile has been reported.[1] The 1967 incidents that give the reports their context are themselves contested, and now have an official non-UFO explanation for Echo Flight.[3]
People and topics
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Robert Hastings — Researcher who has collected accounts of UFOs at nuclear weapons sites, author of UFOs and Nukes.
- Malmstrom Air Force Base — A Montana Minuteman missile base linked to UFO reports.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Robert Salas — Former Minuteman officer who described the 1967 Malmstrom incident.
- Malmstrom missile incidents — The 1967 shutdowns of Minuteman missiles at Malmstrom AFB linked to UFO reports.
On the Timeline
- Chase Brandon's Roswell box (8 July 2012) — Retired CIA officer Chase Brandon says he saw a box labelled 'Roswell' at the agency.
- John Herrington briefing story (2012) — An author relays a story told by a neighbor of a former Energy Secretary.
See every 2012 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Malmstrom UFO incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Robert Hastings, "UFOs reported near Malmstrom AFB's nuclear missile sites in September 2012" · ufohastings.com · archived copy
- Robert Hastings, "UFOs reported by civilians living within Malmstrom AFB's nuclear missile field" · ufohastings.com · archived copy
- Malmstrom UFO incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFOs visited nuclear weapons sites, former Air Force officers say — History News Network · historynewsnetwork.org · archived copy
- 579th Strategic Missile Squadron Atlas F sites, Walker AFB · atlasmissilesilo.com · archived copy
- ufohastings.com · ufohastings.com · archived copy
- ufohastings.com · ufohastings.com · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Malmstrom UFO incident”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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