Within F E Warren
Did a UFO affect F.E. Warren missiles?
The 2010 communications failure is central to F.E.
On this page
- What the Air Force said happened
- How the UFO claim entered the story
- Why coincidence is not proof of cause
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Introduction
In October 2010, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming experienced one of the most unusual nuclear command-and-control failures of the post-Cold War era. For a period of roughly 45 minutes, launch control centres lost normal communications with 50 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles belonging to the 319th Missile Squadron. The incident quickly became national news because it temporarily affected about one-ninth of the United States’ land-based nuclear missile force. [WIRED]wired.comCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBMWIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM…October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin… RadioFreeEurope What transformed a serious technical failure into a Wyoming UFO story was not the outage itself [newyorker.com]newyorker.comto falsely believe it was under Soviet nuclear attack, raising awareness of the inherent risks and errors within nuclear command-and-cont…, but later claims that unidentified objects had been seen in the missile field around the same time. UFO researcher Robert Hastings and several sources he cited argued that unusual aerial activity coincided with the disruption. The Air Force, however, maintained that the communications problem resulted from a hardware fault and stated that investigators found no evidence of sabotage, hacking or any external interference. [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have… [UFO Hastings]ufohastings.comUFO HastingsUFOs & Nukes21 Jun 2011 — Warren Air Force Base, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, temporarily lost the ability to communicate with 50 of…
The key question is therefore narrower than many retellings suggest: not whether the outage happened—it unquestionably did—but whether there is credible evidence that a UFO caused it.
What the Air Force said happened
The communications disruption occurred on 23 October 2010 within part of F.E. Warren’s missile network. Launch officers received “Launch Facility Down” warnings as communication links between five launch control centres and 50 missiles failed. Although operators temporarily lost their normal ability to communicate with the missiles, backup procedures remained available and the weapons did not become uncontrolled or capable of launching on their own. [WIRED]wired.comCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBMWIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM…October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin… [The New Yorker]newyorker.comto falsely believe it was under Soviet nuclear attack, raising awareness of the inherent risks and errors within nuclear command-and-cont…
Contemporary reporting emphasised that the problem appeared to stem from the command network rather than the missiles themselves. Investigators eventually focused on a hardware-related communications fault. Air Force officials stated that a mechanical or electronic failure had caused data transmissions to fall out of sequence, creating a communications bottleneck. They also said there was no evidence of malicious activity. [WIRED]wired.comCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBMWIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM…October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin…
This explanation matters because the UFO interpretation often emerged after the basic technical account had already been established. In official reporting, the outage was treated as a reliability and command-system issue rather than a mystery intrusion. [WIRED]wired.comCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBMWIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM…October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin…
Why the outage attracted so much attention
The event sounded more dramatic than many routine military equipment failures because of the scale involved. Missile crews rarely lose communications with an entire squadron at once. The sight of 50 nuclear missiles simultaneously reporting communication failures naturally raised concerns about the resilience of the US nuclear command structure. [The New Yorker]newyorker.comto falsely believe it was under Soviet nuclear attack, raising awareness of the inherent risks and errors within nuclear command-and-cont…
The incident also occurred only weeks after a highly publicised September 2010 press conference in Washington, where retired military personnel and UFO researcher Robert Hastings again promoted claims that unidentified objects had interfered with nuclear weapons systems during the Cold War. That timing would later become important in how the outage was interpreted. [Wikipedia]WikipediaFrancis E. Warren Air Force BaseFrancis E. Warren Air Force Base
How the UFO claim entered the story
The UFO connection did not come from Air Force briefings, technical reports or mainstream reporting immediately after the outage. It entered the story months later through claims gathered and publicised by Hastings. According to his account, missile maintenance personnel and other sources reported seeing unusual aerial objects in or near parts of the missile field around the period of the communications failure. Some descriptions referred to a large cigar-shaped object observed above the area. [UFO Hastings]ufohastings.comUFO HastingsUFOs & Nukes21 Jun 2011 — Warren Air Force Base, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, temporarily lost the ability to communicate with 50 of… [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have…
Hastings argued that the event resembled earlier allegations from Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, where former missile officers had claimed that UFO sightings coincided with missile malfunctions in 1967. The Wyoming outage was therefore presented as a possible modern example of the broader “UFOs and nukes” pattern that has become one of the central themes of American ufology. [Wikipedia]WikipediaRobert Hastings (ufologistRobert Hastings (ufologist
An important detail often lost in later retellings is that Hastings himself publicly acknowledged a distinction between correlation and causation. In statements promoting the story, he noted that his sources had not directly claimed the observed object caused the communications disruption and that the Air Force had officially attributed the failure to a hardware problem. [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have…
Claims that went beyond the official timeline
Some witnesses cited by Hastings disputed aspects of the official account. They reportedly claimed the communications difficulties were intermittent and lasted longer than the approximately hour-long outage described in early news reports. These assertions became part of the UFO narrative because they suggested a larger and more complex event than the public initially understood. [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have…
However, these claims largely emerged through secondary interviews rather than through released military documentation. That does not automatically make them false, but it means researchers are often comparing documented technical findings against retrospective testimony rather than two equally verifiable records. [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have…
Why coincidence is not proof of cause
The strongest fact in the entire story is the communications outage. The weakest fact is the alleged causal link between the outage and a UFO.
Several issues complicate any attempt to connect the two.
No released evidence directly links the outage to an aerial object. Public reporting on the failure identified communications hardware problems, while no official investigation has publicly concluded that an unidentified craft interfered with missile systems. [WIRED]wired.comCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBMWIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM…October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin…
The sightings and the outage are different categories of evidence. Even if unusual lights or objects were present in the missile field, that alone would not demonstrate that they affected command electronics. Establishing causation would require technical evidence showing that the object’s presence produced the communications failure. Such evidence has not been publicly presented. [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have…
Missile systems experience ordinary failures. Nuclear command networks are complex systems involving communications processors, cables, relay equipment and software. The history of nuclear forces includes numerous equipment malfunctions and false alarms that had no connection to UFO reports. Technical failures are therefore not extraordinary in themselves. [The New Yorker]newyorker.comto falsely believe it was under Soviet nuclear attack, raising awareness of the inherent risks and errors within nuclear command-and-cont…
The case arrived in an already established UFO narrative. Because Hastings and others had spent years arguing that UFOs monitored nuclear weapons sites, observers sympathetic to that theory were primed to interpret the Wyoming outage through that lens. Critics argue that this can encourage confirmation bias, where unrelated events become linked because they fit an existing pattern. [Wikipedia]WikipediaMalmstrom UFO incidentMalmstrom UFO incident
The shadow of the Malmstrom missile stories
The Wyoming incident is often discussed less as a standalone case and more as a supposed sequel to the famous Malmstrom Air Force Base stories from Montana.
In those accounts, former officers claimed UFO activity coincided with missile shutdowns in 1967. Supporters of the UFO interpretation argue that the similarity between the two events strengthens the possibility of a real phenomenon affecting nuclear systems. Critics counter that the Malmstrom claims themselves remain disputed and therefore cannot independently verify the Wyoming allegations. [Wikipedia]WikipediaRobert SheafferRobert Sheaffer
This is one reason the F.E. Warren outage remains significant in Wyoming UFO history. It sits at the intersection of a documented military malfunction and a much larger cultural narrative about UFOs and nuclear weapons. The debate is not simply about one night’s events in 2010. It is also about whether decades of similar stories should be viewed as a meaningful pattern or as a chain of loosely connected anecdotes. [UFO Hastings]ufohastings.comUFO HastingsUFOs & Nukes21 Jun 2011 — Warren Air Force Base, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, temporarily lost the ability to communicate with 50 of…
How the case looks today
More than a decade later, the October 2010 outage remains a genuine and noteworthy military incident. The communications failure occurred, it affected 50 missiles, and it raised legitimate questions about the reliability of nuclear command systems. Those points are well documented. [WIRED]wired.comCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBMWIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM…October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin… RadioFreeEurope The UFO component is far less firmly established. Reports of unusual aerial objects came from later witness accounts and UFO researchers rath [newyorker.com]newyorker.comto falsely believe it was under Soviet nuclear attack, raising awareness of the inherent risks and errors within nuclear command-and-cont… er than from official findings released about the outage. No publicly available evidence has demonstrated that a UFO disabled missile communications, and even some proponents of the UFO interpretation have stopped short of claiming a proven causal connection. [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have…
For Wyoming’s UFO history, that distinction is crucial. The 2010 F.E. Warren event is best understood not as a confirmed case of a UFO affecting nuclear weapons, but as a documented missile communications failure onto which a UFO interpretation was later attached. The outage remains real; the claimed cause remains unproven. That combination is precisely why the incident continues to occupy an important, disputed place in discussions of UFO reports around America’s nuclear missile fields. [WIRED]wired.comCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBMWIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM…October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin… [PR Newswire]prnewswire.comPR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During…Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have…
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Endnotes
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Source: wired.com
Title: Communication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM
Link: https://www.wired.com/2010/10/communications-dropped-to-50-nuke-missiles-in-icbm-snafu/Source snippet
WIREDCommunication With 50 Nuke Missiles Dropped in ICBM...October 26, 2010 — 26 Oct 2010 — Multiple error codes were reported, includin...
Published: October 26, 2010
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Source: Wikipedia
Title: Francis E. Warren Air Force Base
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_E._Warren_Air_Force_Base -
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Robert Hastings (ufologist)
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hastings_%28ufologist%29 -
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Malmstrom UFO incident
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmstrom_UFO_incident -
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Robert Sheaffer
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sheaffer -
Source: newyorker.com
Link: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistakeSource snippet
to falsely believe it was under Soviet nuclear attack, raising awareness of the inherent risks and errors within nuclear command-and-cont...
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Source: prnewswire.com
Link: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/robert-hastings-unidentified-aerial-object-sighted-during-october-2010-nuclear-missile-incident-124199869.htmlSource snippet
PR NewswireRobert Hastings: Unidentified Aerial Object Sighted During...Jun 20, 2011 — Warren AFB, Hastings emphasizes, "My sources have...
Published: october 2010
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Source: ufohastings.com
Link: https://www.ufohastings.com/articles/huge-ufo-sighted-near-nuclear-missiles-during-october-2010-launch-system-disruptionSource snippet
UFO HastingsUFOs & Nukes21 Jun 2011 — Warren Air Force Base, in [Cheyenne]({{ 'cheyenne/' | relative_url }}), Wyoming, temporarily lost the ability to communicate with 50 of...
Published: october 2010
Additional References
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Source: facebook.com
Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1572893699951268/posts/2107164983190801/Source snippet
Pilots confirm UFOs disable nuclear missiles midThere is no evidence that UFOs have ever shut down missile sites. The incident you are re...
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Source: facebook.com
Link: https://www.facebook.com/LosAlamosNationalLab/posts/ufos-at-los-alamos-explore-some-of-the-otherworldly-freedom-of-information-act-f/1020322276794064/Source snippet
UFOs at Los Alamos? 👽 Explore some of the otherworldly...UFOs at Los Alamos? Explore some of the otherworldly Freedom of Information Act...
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Source: facebook.com
Title: heres something terrifying in 1980 a nuclear missile silo in wyoming went silent
Link: https://www.facebook.com/mrballen/posts/heres-something-terrifying-in-1980-a-nuclear-missile-silo-in-wyoming-went-silent/819326627132839/Source snippet
In 1980, a nuclear missile silo in Wyoming went silent...... UFOs appear over nuclear facilities → systems malfunction → UFOs depart → s...
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Source: telegraph.co.uk
Title: Aliens tried to warn US and Russia they were playing with fire during Cold War
Link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/ufo/8029045/Aliens-tried-to-warn-US-and-Russia-they-were-playing-with-fire-during-Cold-War.htmlSource snippet
Aliens 'tried to warn US and Russia they were playing with...28 Sept 2010 — Aliens may have interfered with US and Soviet nuclear weapon...
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Source: rferl.org
Title: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Mystery Failure Knocks One-Ninth Of U.S
Link: https://www.rferl.org/a/Mystery_Failure_Knocks_Many_US_Nuclear_Missiles_OffLine/2202329.htmlSource snippet
Nukes Off-Line27 Oct 2010 —... failure three days later... Officials are quoted as saying the computer communications break occurred on...
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Source: docs.house.gov
Title: HHRG 118 GO12 Wstate ShellenbergerM 20241113
Link: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO12/20241113/117721/HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20241113.pdfSource snippet
ufo-crashretrievals-status-report-iii-amassing-the-e vidence... Blue Book file that shows Howard Cross from Battelle reported he witness...
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Source: arxiv.org
Link: https://arxiv.org/html/2502.06794v2Source snippet
The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea...In doing so, our objective is to clarify the existing global and historical scienti...
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Source: ryan-sprague51.medium.com
Title: the ufo incident over [f e warren]({{ ‘f-e-warren/’ | relative_url }}) air force base 29e1afe34948
Link: https://ryan-sprague51.medium.com/the-ufo-incident-over-f-e-warren-air-force-base-29e1afe34948Source snippet
UFO Incident over F.E. Warren Air Force BaseThe History of UFOs and Nukes... The 2010 F.E. Warren incident is not an isolated case when...
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Source: theufochronicles.com
Link: https://www.theufochronicles.com/2011/06/huge-ufo-sighted-near-nuclear-missiles_19.htmlSource snippet
Huge UFO Sighted Near Nuclear Missiles During October...Jun 21, 2011 — If the reported UFO managed to interfere with the missile-communi...
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Source: cleveland19.com
Link: https://www.cleveland19.com/story/13241483/encounter-former-us-air-force-members-say-u-f-os-and-aliens-may-exist/Source snippet
Air Force members say U-F-O's...29 Sept 2010 — CLEVELAND, OH (WOIO) - A U-F-O researcher and more than a half-dozen retired Air Force me...
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