Five Months in Counting: The Sound of Silence

Its been approximately five months since I posted my finale evaluation of the 1967 Malmstrom UFO incident, "Case Closed!  A Re-evaluation of the Echo Flight Incident".  Since that time Robert Hastings has chosen to ignore it.  Why is that?

I've had my strong suspicions concerning his silence.  In the world of ufology, if something is a pain in the ass, simply ignore it and hopefully it will go away.  Simply, silence from your protractors tend to be a sign that your on solid ground.  To test my theory, I asked Robert Hastings via Frank Warren's UFO Chronicles in a portion of a comment that I had posted:

Thanks your response concerning Walter Figel's lack of affidavit and participation at the press conference. As far as labeling me as a "debunker"...whatever.


It's been approximately five months since I posted "Case Closed! A Re-evaluation of the Echo Flight Incident" and wondered if you had any thoughts concerning the points that I had raised?


Thanks Frank for relaying this for me.

Robert Hastings response:

Why should I, Tim? It would be a waste of my time. You are incapable of objectively evaluating the data you are presented with. For example, your starting position is that I am "using my ex-military sources to make money" when, in reality, they are my most ardent supporters. Did you see me holding a gun to the heads of the guys who participated in my press conference?!

Your input and, ahem, "insights" just go downhill from there. I will respond on a case-by-case basis to your posts, when it suits me and I am in the mood.

So, Robert's only weak and impotent answer is...You are incapable of objectively evaluating the data you are presented...Ninety five percent of this blog's content has been dedicated towards evaluating the data that was "presented" to me, plus the added value of my experience with the Minuteman weapon system.  I've painstakingly broken down the Echo incident into numerous subsections so as to look at all the different layers of strata formulating an ongoing basis for my eventual final conclusion and this evaluation was accomplished in broad daylight for all to see...total transparency.

Each segment of my research was presented on my blog.  I provided what resources that was used.  For the most part I had used the very same data that Hastings had used to shore up his conclusion.  In the case of using my missile crew experiences, I had provided the readers with an in-depth explanation.  And throughout this transparent process, not one word of critique from Hastings.  Why was that?  Could it be for the simple reason that he had no solid foundation to do so?

Here is a classic Hastings trait (one of many), the art of deflection...For example, your starting position is that I am "using my ex-military sources to make money"...No Robert, that was not my starting position.  This was my actual starting position:

"UFO(s) caused ten Minuteman ICBM to drop off alert at Malmstrom AFB, March 16, 1967" solely based on the statements made by one man that he received a report from "someone" that a UFO was spotted over one of the LFs.

Does the above look familiar?  That happens to be Hastings starting point as well.  Robert Hastings had framed a hypothesis solely supported by someone hearing about UFOs and subsequent rumors of UFO activity.  My investigation proved Hastings' hypothesis wrong and his supporting arguments lacking of any sound foundations, especially since after 40 years, no one has ever come forward as an eye witness to the incident.  More to the point, here are my 11 points that support my claim of no UFOs in or near the Echo Flight area:

1.  High probability that no maintenance teams were out on any of Echo's sites during shutdowns.
2.  No maintenance or security teams mentioned in the Unit History.
3.  After 44 years, none of the supposed eye witnesses have ever been identified, nor have these people ever came forward, concluding that they may never have existed in the first place.
4.  Walter Figel's inconsistency from both Hastings and Salas' interviews.
5.  Walter Figel's perceived reluctance to publicly support Hastings' UFO theory, as evidence by, his absence from the D.C press conference, lack of an affidavit affirming his statements.
6.  Eric Carlson's strong denial of receiving any UFO reports from security personnel.
7.  No intercept missions flown by the Montana National Guard against any unknown radar contacts.
8.  Minuteman LF design of connectivity isolation precludes any one event (UFO included) from affecting the remaining ICBMs in a given flight.
9.  Echo was a flight specific event with no other adjoining flight effected
10.  The only plausible UFO scenario would have been a UFO over/near Echo's LCF/LCC.  This never occurred and no reports or rumors ever comes close to supporting this scenario.
11.  The Boeing ECP and final installation of EMP suppression fixes resulting in no Echo-like situation from ever happening again for all SAC missile wings (Minuteman and Titan).

So as can be seen, Hastings assertion of my being...incapable of objectively evaluating the data you are presented with...is a severe attempt at deflecting away from from the question put to him.  Notice that he provides no examples to back his assertion.

I did respond to Hastings' comment, and as of this date, Frank Warren has not posted it on his site.  But I'm sure that at a minimum, Frank has relayed it to Hastings.  I'm assuming that Frank thought my comment to be a personal attack...Frank tends to frown on those sorts of things...except for Robert's attacks of course.  Par for the course, but it's Frank's site and his rules and that's the way it is. 

Here is the actual comment sent to Hastings:

Robert, you practice the art of deflection rather well. Your reluctance to even half-hearted rebut my arguments speak volumes as to your capacity to do so.


For instance, you will go to great lengths to engage in and antagonize James Carlson, whom you view as mentally ill (your words) yet avoid my more "coherent" arguments. Why is that? I suppose that you enjoy easy targets...plucking at the lower hanging fruit.


I told you almost two years ago when we played our email game of "contact the Hastings sources" that I actually found you quite fascinating as far as your strongly held view points and I have always wondered why that was so. What happened to you back in 1967 while at Malmstrom? Why does a man, who holds his father in high esteem, viciously attack a man such as James Carlson who equally holds the same towards his father? It is kind of odd, in a strange twist, that you and James have common ground.

As far as your commenting on my site, your always welcome to do so...on a case by case basis of course.


I have things coming down the pike for you...your case by case basis may be coming at you rather quickly.

On second thought Robert has answered in detail my question.  Silence is not bad after all.

 

Anatomy of a UFO Story: F.E Warren AFB 2010

The Genesis of a UFO Story, In Real Time

What are the origins of the common UFO story?  Most, if not all, of my blog postings have been about events that happened well over 40 years ago.  Facts tend to be blurred as direct witness recall abilities tend to fade over time.  The possibility of confabulatory ideations effecting the thought process becomes real and all too apparent.  In a lot of cases, direct witnesses are now deceased and we're left to decipher what it was that they saw or heard which is often hampered by the "soot" covered by the numerous speculations that have that uncanny ability to morph into "fact" and leaving the witnesses' original intent lost to the present day observer.

Now we have the opportunity to look at a case in "real time."  The recent event at FE Warren AFB that occurred back in October 2010 allows us to witness the machinations of the UFO lore from its birth to its ongoing and ever changing evolution from fact to fiction. 

The Incident, As Reported by the Media

The Atlantic, "Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles"  This was the original article that disclosed the incident.  Marc Ambinder, White House correspondent for the National Journal/contributing editor for Atlantic broke the story on Oct 26, 2010.  As you can see, the original reports appeared to list the incident as a "power outage" but was amended to that of a communication outage.  Soon after this report, various television outlets began to broadcast news segments concerning the incident (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc) (The Atlantic link is from http://www.ufohastings.com/)

"According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of at least five missiles, usually ten of them, began to "ping" out of sequence, resulting in a surge of "noise" through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they're not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes."

The Air Force Times, "Computer Failure Disrupts Missiles at Warren"  The Air Force times ran a short on-line article on Oct 26, 2010.

"According to the official, engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of at least five missiles, usually ten of them, began to "ping" out of sequence, resulting in a surge of "noise" through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they're not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes."

"Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said the break occurred early Saturday and lasted less than one hour. The White House was briefed about the failure Tuesday morning."

"The equipment failure disrupted “communication between the control center and the missiles, but during that time they were still able to monitor the security of the affected missiles,” Vician said. “The missiles were always protected. We have multiple redundancies and security features, and control features.”

"One military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the incident publicly, said the equipment in the launch control center has been the subject of unspecified communications problems in the past"

"Pentagon Cites Hardware Glitch in ICBM Outage" The Los Angeles Times article describing the event October 27, 2010:

"... A communications malfunction at a Wyoming Air Force base knocked 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles offline for 45 minutes last weekend as technicians scrambled to diagnose the problem, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.  The glitch in the underground cable system linking launch control centers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base to the missile silos affected one-ninth of the U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force, a key part of the nation's nuclear arsenal, officials said..."

"Equipment Failure Cited in Warren Incident" 
The Air Force Times reporting of the findings of the operational review board pertaining the the causation of the incident (March 3, 2011)

"Equipment failure — not human error — caused the nearly hourlong communications outage that affected 50 nuclear missiles last fall at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., service officials said."

"A circuit card in a weapons-system processor knocked out of place by heat and vibration generated by regular operations caused the Oct. 23 disruption, according to an operations review board investigating the incident."

"The card had not been essentially locked into place after maintenance work had been done, but the weapons-system processor had worked for more than nine hours before the card came loose, according to a redacted copy of the board’s report, released Wednesday by Global Strike Command. Nuclear deterrence is a mission of the command."

The above news reports are one of many.  If you Google using the key words: FE Warren AFB, missile communication outage, numerous news articles appear describing the incident, many piggy backing off of the original Atlantic story.  Yet, all basically tell the same story based on the "facts" as provided by Air Force, DoD and Pentagon sources.  In fact key portions of the reporting are parroting one main source.  To the casual observer, the original medial report appears complete and concise, yet all are filled with numerous errors concerning how the Minuteman weapon system actually operates.  These errors are not the fault of the media reporters, but  the fault of the original sources.  Amazingly, the Air Force Times equally carried these errors in their original story.  Who are these sources and did they provided factual information?

Government agencies dealing with military operations employ the use of public affairs officers or spokespersons to provide information to the news media and the general public.  Most public affairs officers have no clue or direct knowledge of what they are disseminating and this generally is the cause of conflicting/disjointed information and why official stances change over a period of time especially when dealing with an incident such as FE Warren where the story is not static but dynamic by its nature.  Combine this with a news reporter trying to understand the information that is being given to him/her, who has no experience with the weapon system involved,  it inevitably becomes a foregone conclusion that confusion will develop and suspicions will arise.

Did the Air Force want the public to know about FE Warren's missile incident?  The answer is a resounding NO.  The day to day operational status of a missile wing is generally classified for obvious reasons.  In the case of FE Warren where there was an unusual problem,  the Air Force would have been perfectly content to quietly assess, correct, and evaluate the causation of the incident and return back to normal operations which for all practical purposes they did.  But it is the inherent nature of this "flying below the radar" approach that results in the propagation of conspiracy ideations by certain segments of the population.

The last report from the Air Force Times provides what actually occurred.  A circuit card was loosely placed in the Weapon System Processor in the LCC in question.  This had been done some nine hours prior to the outage by a maintenance team on site.  And of course, from the review board's report, the issue lasted less than an hour.

Robert Hastings" UFO "Mining" Operations

In all of the main stream media reports, not one word is mentioned of any strange sightings during the Weapon System Processor (WSP) problems affecting the 319th's five Launch Control Centers.  Tim Printy, who writes the SUNlite on-line news letter, relayed to me that when he had checked on the MUFON and NUFORC websites there was no listing of any reports coming from the Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska areas associated the FE Warren's missile wing.  Tim had wrote a short segment in SUNlite about FE Warren.   I did a check myself and found Printy's observations to be accurate.  I even checked for any reports that may have been filed between October 20 through October 30 and found no reporting of any UFOs in the affected vicinity.nor did I see any references to "cigar" or blimp-like objects. 

Yet not to be discouraged, UFO "researcher", Robert Hastings took it upon himself to pay a visit to the Cheyenne, WY area to get to the bottom of things.  The following are articles that Hastings had written and posted on various UFO websites documented his "investigation."  Even by the time that Hastings had decided to personally "wildcat" for UFOs, there had not been one report listing UFO activity.  I had wondered at the time if Hastings was going to, at his own personal expense, be willing to come up empty handed.  As the reader can see, Hastings did not disappoint me.  Being that not one word of UFOs had been uttered, Hastings had "amazingly" appeared to have produced UFOs out of thin air!

Robert Hastings' "Huge UFO Sighted Near Nuclear Missiles During October 2010 Launch System Disruption"

This dramatic story was leaked to Mark Ambinder, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, which published it three days later.1 The Air Force then quickly acknowledged the problem, saying that a back-up system could have launched the missiles and claiming that the breakdown had lasted a mere 59 minutes.

James Carlson had asked me if I really believed that Ambinder's article sparked Hastings attention and the above confirms my suspicion.  For some reason Hastings appeared to be perseverating about whether the official 59 minute outage was correct because (see below) he was told by two "anonymous" sources that the outage lasted over several hours (Hastings would later settle for 24 plus hours).  And my response is...so what?  It made no difference what so ever concerning the ability to launch the ICBMs. 

However, the latter statement was untrue, according to two missile technicians stationed at F.E. Warren, who say that the communications problem, while intermittent, actually persisted over several hours.

Significantly, these same individuals report multiple sightings by "numerous [Air Force] teams" of an enormous cigar-shaped craft maneuvering high above the missile field on the day of the disruption, as well as the following day. The huge UFO was described as appearing similar to a World War I German Zeppelin, but had no passenger gondola or advertising on its hull, as would a commercial blimp.

I do recall seeing a segment on the television series "Fringe" where this actually occurred, depicting a "zeppelin" over modern day Boston.  I wonder if Hastings' sources saw the same segment?

The confidential Air Force sources further report that the commander of their squadron has sternly warned its members not to talk to journalists or researchers about "the things they may or may not have seen" in the sky near the missiles in recent months and have threatened severe penalties for anyone violating security. Consequently, these persons must remain anonymous at this time.

Back in the early 1980s, newspaper columnist Jack Anderson was attempting to contact and interview ICBM crews by calling directly the Launch Control Center.  We were briefed not to engage in conversation with Mr. Anderson.  Robert Hastings apparently has not quiet grasped the concept of OPSEC.  But the last sentence is important for the birth of this UFO lore..."Consequently, these persons must remain anonymous at this time."  With total anonymity, Hastings "witnesses" can provide unlimited information with out the hassle of being vetted for factual content.  Throw in the government persecution threats and Hastings now has a nice conspiracy angle to boost an Air Force cover-up scheme.  And this is all had from the use of anonymous sources.

This is the crux of James Carlson's article over at Realityuncovered.net, "By Their Works Shall Ye Know Them" where he exposes the self-serving use of anonymous sources.  James makes the observation that it's entirely possible that these anonymous sources may not exists.  Its a good read and well worth the time spent reading his four part expose.  Personally, this is Carlson at his best uncovering such journalistic incontinence.

If the mysterious cigar-shaped object repeatedly sighted on October 23–24 was somehow involved with the 50-missile launch system disruption, it wouldn't be the first time that a UFO interfered with the functionality of nuclear missiles, according to several U.S. Air Force veterans who have courageously gone public with their own, still-classified close encounters at various ICBM bases during the Cold War era.

Here Hastings shamelessly uses "slight of hand" techniques propagating a story line that a UFO affected 50 ICBMs launch capabilities.  True, five LCCs were out of sync with each of their 10 ICBMs, but the sorties were still alert ready and could have been launched by other means.  This was strictly an LCC event, not an LF event.  As far as this "not being the first time...", Hastings should review my "Case Closed" post concerning the Echo Flight myth that he and others had home spun.  I also had mentioned in my recent FE Warren post that this issue had occurred at Malmstrom AFB in the 1990s.

Here from a Hastings "safe-house," UFO Digest rehashing  the event.  Yet now we are told that there are "other" sightings as of March 26, 2011.  Evidently mitosis and cytokinesis is not strictly limited to the cellular process.

Over the past three months, even more reports have come in and I now know of other sightings by civilians and law enforcement personnel in the larger, tri-state area of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado, where F.E. Warren’s 9,600 square-mile missile field is located.

Cigar, cylinder, spherical and triangular-shaped aerial objects—many of them silently maneuvering or hovering at very low altitude—have been reported in the region as early as mid-September 2010 and as recently as March 18, 2011...

Given the large area covered by the 319th, 320th, and 321st Missile Squadrons, you would have thought that the hovering "objects" would have been noticed and reported by hundreds of observers, especially since it was broad daylight.  Yet despite the optimum view conditions very little is shown on the MUFON and NUFORC data bases.  Why is that?

Billy Cox, DeVoid, 22 June 2011, "A Vaccum of Names" 

Hastings says he got the latest leads in December from a “retired missile maintenance technician with contacts at F.E. Warren” and that two additional USAF retirees verified the reports of UFO activity

Hastings initial source?  This anonymous individual provides Hastings with the names of the anonymous active duty missile maintenance personnel, who in turn provide Hastings with the "details" of the LCC communication outage and the alleged UFO sightings.  As of this time, Hastings sources still remain anonymous.  Difficult to follow?

...The problem is, this story has been saturated with unnamed sources from the get-go, even from an unusually skittish civilian sector, as The Western Nebraska Observer discovered in April. Without names, this one can’t go anywhere because it has no legs

And Billy Cox squarely hits the nail on the head.  And this from a Hastings supporter!  And Cox is being kind, but the underlining meaning is clear...how can you be absolutely sure that what Hastings is telling us is factual?

This is the first of two parts.  The second part will look at the "witnesses" of the UFO sightings in and around FE Warren.

Titan II Complex 373-4: Was It Really Haunted?

"As far as 3-4, apart from the soot on the walls around the switchgear, there are two things that stand out in my memory.


Firstly, I remember when out in the silo, I would from time to time see something out of the corner of my eye, which when I looked was nothing out of the ordinary. I know some people will put that down to paying too much attention to the stories about the site, but that's the only site I ever noticed that at, even compared to the other site where a death had occurred, 373-5, which was pretty much like every other site; no reputation, and nothing unusual happening.


The second happened late one afternoon when I accompanied the crew chief out to the silo while he completed some task he needed to do before he could head back to the base that day. Seems to me we had to go down to level 3, or it may have been level 4. It was a long time ago, and my memory is not clear on what level exactly we went down to, only that it was below level 2 but not more than a couple of levels.


All the maintenance people had already finished their tasks and left the silo before we went out (which makes me now think he may have wanted to doublecheck their work) . Anyway, he had accomplished whatever he needed to do/check on, and we had boarded the silo elevator to return to level 2. When we got there, I raised the wire mesh internal gate, and was just opening the bi-parting doors when the elevator call bell started ringing. I remember being very annoyed that the crew commander hadn't let me know that someone else had come out to the silo after we had left the control center (something very uncharacteristic for him to do) so I plugged in the WTMN headset and called the Control Center to see who else was out there in the hole. The crew commander answered, and after hearing my question about who else was in the silo, told me there was no one else out there except us. Now I'm wondering wtf was going on, so after discussing my intentions with the crew commander, I tell the crew chief there's no one else out there but us, and we're going to find out what's going on.


Of course, as all this is happening, the elevator call bell continues to ring. We get back on the elevator, close the doors, and the elevator goes down to level 8. We get out, walk around the launch duct, open the launch duct access door and check out the deflector, open each of the floor hatches to check out the silo sumps, and of course find absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.


The ride back up to level 2 and on through to the control center is uneventful, as was the rest of that alert. Of course the rest of the crew wanted me to fill them in on what was going on. All I could tell them was what had happened, I had no other explanation to offer.


Before anybody suggests the crew chief was pulling a joke on me, I was the one driving the elevator, standing on that side of the elevator where the elevator control panel was. He never had the chance to push another level's button without it being obvious to me what was going on. And I never considered him to be the jokester type.


As best as I can recall, this was early fall of 1972"  Former Titan II crew member "Sherwood" as posted on themissileforums.com

Missileers tend to refer to launch complexes with their own designations.  The 308th Strategic Missile Wing's Titan II complex 373-4 was referred to as 3-4 for those who routinely manned it and pulled nuclear alert duty.  Sometimes, these sites took on the name of the local geographical area.  In the case of 373-4, its forever tagged as...Searcy.  I've tried to recall worst events in SAC's ICBM history, but fail to come up with anything that rivals the tragedy that occurred at complex 373-4 on August 9, 1965.

THE SENTINEL-RECORD Wednesday, August 11, 1965, By Al Schay
SEARCY, Ark. (AP) - Air force investigators swarmed the scorched launch tube of a Titan 11 missile complex Tuesday to find the cause of an explosion and fire that killed 53 civilians in the "gun barrel" of America's mightiest ballistic missile. The tragedy was the first in the history of the Titan system, which includes 54 complexes that have been fully operational since December 1963.   Read more at techbastard.com 

I suspect that most of my readers have never heard of the accident at Searcy.  With exception of a few individuals, Searcy has receded from the Air Force's memory.  For those few who still remember...

"... He told me he was MCCC on duty the day of the fire. He saw smoke coming up one side of the long cableway, with clear air going down the other side. In about '74, I got an MFT (name escapes me, and he's not in either of my two crew pix) on my crew who told he was there, in casual status, and was detailed to help carry out the bodies and clean up after the fire. Said he saw an ear stuck to the emergency ladder, and finger scratches in the sooty silo walls."

"I also worked relief in the site that burned in 1965 killing 53 people. There were some who refused to work 373-4 because they thought it was haunted. It did have a morning mist that was waist high. The gravel would settle after you walked across it and sounded a bit like someone was following you across the compound to the entrance. They never got the soot off the walls in most of the silo or the long passage from the blast door to the silo."

"During an evaluation in the simulator two years later they threw a "fire in the diesel engine area" at the crew that was on duty. The commander almost lost it. I don't think he ever fully recovered."  Former Titan II crew member

A complete recounting and investigation of the accident can be found on techbastard.com.


Searcy, Arkansas provides a good example for my theory detailing the passing on of personal experiences by missile crew members.  The above statements by the former Titan II crew members were posted in a forum back in 2010 and 45 years has elapsed since the incident's occurrence.  The memories still appear "fresh" for it was a life-changing event for those that were actually on alert and those that assisted in the recovery operations back on August 9, 1965.

Was complex 373-4 haunted?  As far as ghosts are concerned, I really can't say with any degree of certainty, but Searcy does haunt those who lost love ones and members of the military that were there.

Addendum 3/26/2012:  I've added a follow-on based on contact with one of the individuals that was quoted in this post.  Sherwood, on-line moniker, contacted me via themissileforums.com with the following:

"I see you used my 373-4 story on your blog. Not annoyed, just surprised to see it show up elsewhere. I found it while searching for Titan II pictures, something I repeat from time to time.

Follow-on: On our next alert out at the site, I opened up and inspected the silo elevator control relay cabinet. I wanted to see if there was anything there that could explain the previous alert's experience.

I didn't see anything at all out of the ordinary there. It was clean, with no evidence of any sooting. I didn't really expect to see anything, because all switches and cabinets in the silo were explosion proof, but I wanted to rule that possibility out.

The other thing that happened (though not to me personally) was that the other two members on the crew reported the WireTypeMaintenanceNet call signal went off in the wee hours when my half of the crew was sleeping. Whether that was before or after the elevator incident I don't really remember.

There was not a WTMN headset station in the bedroom of the Titan II control center. I think there was one on that level by the site pressurized water tank, but you'd have to open the bedroom door to access it, and I'm a very light sleeper so I know that scenario doesn't fly. We were all business on that crew - no jokers, totally unlike a crew I was on later."

Thanks Sherwood for the follow-on story.  Should you recall other experiences, please let me know.

FE Warren: The New Echo Flight?...Not Hardly

For the past few months, I've been following, off and on, the speculations surrounding FE Warren's  319th Missile Squadron's loss of communications with all 50 of it's Minuteman III ICBMs back on 23 Oct 2010.  Robert Hastings has apparently been in the fore front driving the most wildest of those speculations citing from the obligatory "anonymous sources" that a cigar-shaped object was seen hovering in the vicinity of the 319th's flight area.  Hastings "exhaustive" quasi-conclusions can be read on numerous blog sites including Frank Warren's UFOChronicles website. Hastings latest can be accessed at Frank's site using the provided link:  http://www.theufochronicles.com/2012/01/james-carlson-gets-it-wrong-again.html   Hastings has proven an old James Carville axiom to be aptly valid:  "If you drag a fifty dollar bill through a trailer park, there's no telling what you'll come up with." (I'm paraphrasing here, but it's fairly accurate from Carville).

Putting speculation aside, lets look at the actual facts as currently known.  The Air Force Times gives a description of the incident (yes, I realize that some in ufology equates the AF Times to a version of Pravda) and the article is found here:  http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2011/03/air-force-warren-equipment-failure-cited-030511w/  So here is the classic match-up:  UFO vs circuit card, or possibility vs probability.  I suggest folks dust off and review their text books on Inferential Analysis to assist with making a decision on this one.

As for Hastings "anonymous" sources, let's look at the opinions of those "young guns" actually familiar with the situation, ie those lads/lasses that are actually pulling the nuclear alerts in the defense of our country:

"The article didn't mention why maintenance was done on the card, so I won't either. But as the article says, yeah. Maintenance removed the card, and it wasn't properly locked back in.  The report also mentions changes to the WSP hardware and T.O.s, so it's not a simple "They obviously didn't lock in it place."  Minot crew member

'I believe the original maintenance on the WSP wasn't due to a bad card, but due to RIVET MILE scheduled periodic maintenance."  Malmstrom crew member

"I already forgot most of what they said in T3 last month when they explained it, but yeah, the original maintenance wasn't related to the comm problem."  FE Warren crew member

"hard to figure out what one can say, but bravo was down for a contracted set of tests that isolated it and tests were performed on the site (not rivit mile), when that was done, things were not quite right so it was mmoc was changing cards thinking that was what was wrong."  FE Warren crew member

As can be gleaned from the above statements, it appears that the LCC in question may have experienced maintenance early on prior to the problem occurring, yet in the end, it all boils down to a circuit card not properly inserted into the Weapon System Processor causing an interface issue with the other four squadron LCCs.  Is this a new occurrence that has never happened before, or to use a Hastings term "unprecedented"?  I'm afraid that I'm going to burst the Hastings Bubble:

"Had a similar incident in the late 90's. Two LCCs down for mnx. One came up with a new WSP. As soon as they told us they turned it on we started losing comms and eventually 17 of my LFs (and most of the rest) went LFDN in the 6 or so minutes it took us to convince the crew to 'damn the T.O. and just pull power' from the new WSP. Despite not even getting to the point where the crew could select a time slot the new drawer was transmitting on it's own continuously. The next few days were long ones for the cops."  Former missile crew/maintenance

Whats forgotten due to all of the "noise" being generated by Hastings is that all 50 ICBMs remained on alert and were monitored by back-up systems such as...ALCC, the air borne platforms that are a secondary monitoring platform for any and all of our ICBMs.

Daily Report eNewsletter Air Force Magazine.Com

Thursday October 28, 2010

Missile Unit Experienced Communications Disruption: The 319th Missile Squadron headquartered at FE Warren AFB, Wyo., overseer of 50 Minuteman III ICBMs, experienced "a disruption of communications" between its five launch control centers and the missiles this past Saturday, Lt. Col. John Thomas, Air Force Global Strike Command spokesman, told the Daily Report Wednesday. He said the evidence so far points to a mechanical part failure associated with the missile complex's primary communications system. Somehow the electronic queries that the LCCs send out to each missile to verify its health and status got out of sync and created a transmissions logjam, kind of like 50 people trying to speak simultaneously on the same walkie-talkie frequency. Thomas said it took the missileers about 45 minutes to diagnose and isolate the issue. They switched control of all 50 missiles to one of the LCCs. (Normally each LCC controls 10 missiles.) In short order, all but one of the LCCs were back in the network. However, one of the squadron's LCCs remains offline for additional study of the anomaly, he said. Thomas said there's no evidence of tampering or malicious conduct. USAF technical experts think the issue is similar to ones that occurred in the late 1990s at Malmstrom AFB, Mont., and Minot AFB, N.D., he said. The missile crews at FE Warren had multiple safety, security, and command and control systems that were available throughout this event. Thomas said there was never any danger of unauthorized missile launch and the missiles' wartime capability "was never affected." And there was no outright outage of communications or power as some press reports have indicated. (See also Associated Press report and AFPS report by Terri Moon Cronk.)

So, there you have it...and...Did It Really Happen?

Sources cited from:  The Mercinary Missileer-Association of Air Force Missileers

Tim Printy Tackles the 1957 RB-47 UFO Case!

A few days ago, Tim Printy published a very detailed review of the famous 1957 UFO case involving an RB-47 and what UFO proponents believe to be UFOs tracking the aircraft as it performed a training mission out of Forbes AFB, KS.

Well over six months ago, Tim was issued a challenge to "solve" the case once and for all as the RB-47 case is considered "Ufology's Best Evidence."  As Tim explains in his article his work is nowhere conclusive, yet does raise numerous questions concerning the original research conducted by Brad Sparks and the late Phillip Klass.

Tim Printy's fine and exhaustive work can be found in his latest edition of SUNlite and I highly encourage you to read the article regardless on what side of the fence which you sit.

I would like to welcome any comments on Tim Printy's article and since Tim visits my site from time to time, maybe he would be willing to engage in discussion.