Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of ex-Soviet Army personnel came forward and began discussing their involvement in similar incidents in that country during the Cold War era. One of those events occurred on October 4, 1982, near the Ukrainian town of Byelokoroviche, when a disc-shaped UFO apparently hovered over a nuclear missile base for an extended period. At one point during the encounter, a number of nuclear missiles suddenly activated—without authorization from Moscow or any action being taken by the missile launch officers—and were preparing to launch! Had they done so, World War III would have very probably been underway. Fortunately, after 15 seconds, the anomalous activation ceased and the missiles returned to stand-by status. A subsequent investigation by the Soviet government discovered no equipment malfunctions that would have explained the event.

This incident was first publicized in October 1994, on the American ABC News program Prime Time Live (which unethically used KGB documents and source leads provided to its producers by KLAS-TV reporter George Knapp, without crediting his contributions). A transcript of that program may be found here.

More recently, on June 16, 2010, a large-circulation Russian newspaper, Life, published an article about the case, which may be found at http://zhizn.ru/articles/show/192.A badly-mangled English translation of the article, courtesy of Google, is also available.

One of the paper's reporters, Inessa Kornienko, interviewed hitherto unidentified witnesses who provided additional details about the incident. While preparing the article, Kornienko contacted me and asked if I were aware of the case. I told her that not only did I know about it, I had once interviewed a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile launch officer, David H. Schuur, who had described a very similar event at Minot AFB, North Dakota, in the mid-1960s. A verbatim summary of Schuur's revelations may be found here.

Kornienko incorporated some of my remarks in the Life article, and noted the obvious similarity between the two cases. Because Google's Russian-to-English translation is so torturous, and thoroughly incomprehensible at times, I asked the reporter for a few clarifications, which she provided, so that a more user-friendly translation might be achieved. The result follows here.

The Life Article

UFO Hacked Nuclear Codes

Russia and the USA were on the brink of nuclear war because of UFO attacks on military bases where nuclear missiles were on alert.

Sensational documents and other evidence confirm that the Soviet military base near Byelokoroviche, Ukraine, and the U.S. Air Force base near Minot, North Dakota, were attacked by aliens from space. Hovering over the missiles, [in each incident,] a UFO in a matter of seconds hacked the codes required to launch them, nearly unleashing a Third World War. Journalists working for Life found revealing documents about [the Ukrainian incident] and located eyewitnesses to the alien attack.

For a 20-year-old radio operator, Vladimir Matveyev, assigned to the 50th Missile Division RVSN, Carpathian Military District, October 4, 1982 was a day that he will remember for the rest of his life. In the evening, he and a thousand soldiers and officers saw a UFO for almost an hour, as it hovered over the R-12 missile silos. "It was unbelievable. Approximately one-and-a-half kilometers from us hovered an elliptical-shaped object," the former rocketeer excitedly told Life. "The dimensions of the UFO shocked us—as large as a five-story house! Barely-visible lights flew up to the object. The guys [and I] were on our way to dinner when we all saw it! The UFO continued to hover, slowly moving to the left, as if drifting. One officer tried to get closer to it in a car but the UFO flew away. At this time all of the missile launchers malfunctioned. The UFO [also] blocked radio signal reception in the bunker. We heard only complete silence, which we could not understand, because this had never happened before. We were [later] told that the radio equipment was burnt!"

The Report

In his official statement on the incident, Major Michael Katzman, who was responsible for the missiles' guidance systems, reported that the computer equipment and security systems had been disabled by a powerful [electromagnetic] pulse. He wrote that all of the control panels had lit up, indicating the missiles were preparing to launch toward their strategic targets.

Former TsSBUiS [missile division] Chief Yuri Zolotukhin told a Life journalist, "I too was a witness to these events and also saw the UFO, but could not reveal what had happened to the sensitive equipment because I signed a non-disclosure document [designed to] protect state secrets." These events happened in the underground bunker where the missile control panels display the missiles' readiness status. [During the incident] the panels lit up, indicating that the missiles had gone to full combat readiness and were preparing to launch. [Ordinarily] this is possible only after obtaining an order from Moscow. In this case, it happened by itself. The officers on duty at their battle stations were shocked. [Figuratively speaking,] their hair had turned gray. They said that the information appearing on the control panels indicated that all security measures designed to prevent an unauthorized launch of the missiles had been hacked! Within just a few seconds, the launch officers had lost control over their nuclear weapons. Immediately after this occurred, the officers called Moscow. The reply they got was that no order to launch had been issued. After 15 seconds, all of the controls reset to the normal position.

[Former] rocketeer Vladimir Matveyev says, "A few days later, a commission came to the base and interviewed the witnesses. The guys gave them their drawings of the UFO. One of the officers swore on his [Communist] Party membership that he wasn't drunk. A few days later we were lined up [for our morning inspection by our officers] and read an order from the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, designated number R010, which said, 'If you see a UFO, do not panic and do not shoot.' Then I realized why the officers who had their finger 'on the button' looked so old and had gray hair."

USA

A U.S. Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, once experienced a similar incident, this Life journalist was told by American UFO investigator, 60-year-old Robert Hastings. He is the author of research on UFO activity at strategic nuclear facilities. Hastings personally spoke with a [former] Intercontinental Ballistic Missile commander, [then] Lieutenant David Schuur. "Schuur told me that in 1966 he was involved in an event in which an Unidentified Flying Object repeatedly activated [the launch sequence in his] missiles," says the ufologist. "Schuur told me that his missile guards had informed him that a big, bright object was [moving from missile to missile]. When the UFO [hovered over] a [given] missile, his control panel indicated that it was preparing to launch. This meant that somehow it had received a launch authorization. Every time that happened, Schuur had to manually enter a launch 'Inhibit' command. The UFO seemed to be scanning the missiles [because various other functions were temporarily activated as well]. The next day, Schuur's commanders said that there was nothing to discuss."

In the hardcopy (print) article that Life circulated within Russia last week, additional material was published by the newspaper. Reporter Kornienko sent me that version of the article in both Russian and Google-translated English. Among the comments appearing in it were these:

My Take

I think [the UFO] technology allows [their pilots] to launch our missiles. However, they choose not to do so. Cases such as Byelokoroviche and Minot [suggest] that aliens are trying to understand how these systems work, and what they need to do in the event of war breaking out, to stop the feuding children, i.e., us. I believe that the UFO [pilots], by running the rockets' pre-launch countdown, learned how to stop it.