Robert L. Hastings

The leading voice on the connection between UFOs and nuclear weapons

Name	Robert L. Hastings
Age	76
Born	May 6, 1950
Famous for	Investigating and documenting decades of alleged UFO incursions at nuclear weapons facilities worldwide

The Earth is being visited by beings from another world, who, for whatever reason, have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race.

Pop culture often portrays anything extraterrestrial in the most sensationalist ways. But not Robert L. Hastings.

Thanks to his extensive documentation and detailed research into UAPs at nuclear facilities worldwide, Hastings helped establish the link between UFOs and nuclear weapons.

His undying curiosity and sharp, investigative skills earned him praise from both the UFO community and mainstream audiences.

That’s why he’s regarded as one of the leading voices on UFO incursions at nuclear facilities.

Who is Robert L. Hastings?

Robert L. Hastings is an American journalist and filmmaker known for his investigative work involving UAPs reported at military bases housing nuclear missiles. 

His fascination with UFOs began as a teenager while working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, the very same base where Robert ‘Bob’ Salas witnessed first-hand how UFOs disabled a missile flight he was overseeing in 1967.

Early years

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Hastings was the son of a career U.S. Air Force officer. Like most military families, they moved around different air bases. 

In the 1960s, they were stationed at Malmstrom, the largest military complex in the U.S. that maintains and operates Minuteman III ICBMs. His father’s tenure at Malmstrom also overlapped with Salas’s.

The control tower encounter

Robert E. Hastings offered his then-16-year-old son a job as a janitor in the control tower’s Radar Approach Control (RAPCON) room. There, the younger Hastings befriended FAA controller Bob Grasser, who served as his supervisor and, at the same time, a tutor on radar theory.

One evening, while sweeping the control tower’s floors, Hastings’s supervisor called his attention and beckoned him toward the radar screen, where five unidentified targets had been detected manoeuvring near the base’s nuclear missile silos. 

It instantly sparked a burning curiosity within the young Hastings, and he started firing questions at Grasser.

The FAA controller eventually sensed that he might have shared more than he was allowed to. But that did not stop Hastings from exploring further.

Burning curiosity

When he went home, the giddy, excited Hastings shared his experiences with his father.

But Robert E. Hastings told his son only that most of the men probably thought they were simply Soviet surveillance planes.

The teenage Robert L. Hastings was sceptical.

Hastings later shared with YouTuber Jesse Michaels in a 2025 interview:

Even though I was 16, I went: five surveillance planes? You know, and the controller told me they were basically stationary… Are the Soviets flying helicopters over Montana? I don’t think so.

And that curiosity only intensified into his adulthood.

Even after moving out of Montana, earning a degree in photography from Ohio University, and working as a photographic technician at Northern Illinois University (NIU), the event at Malmstrom continued to weigh on Hastings.

The Minot Air Force Report and J. Allen Hynek

While working at NIU in the early 1970s, Hastings never lost his interest in UAPs. 

On a random day, he came across a 1966 article in The Saturday Evening Post, written by the famed astronomer and ufologist J. Allen Hynek, who at that time was leading government efforts under Project Blue Book.

What struck Hastings was Hynek’s investigation into unidentified aircraft hovering above nuclear missile silos at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

It was more than a trip down memory lane. For Hastings, it was the pivotal moment that propelled him to investigate and document UFO reports at nuclear bases full-time.

What were Robert L. Hastings’s contributions to UFO research?

Over the course of 40 years, Robert L. Hastings interviewed more than 160 servicemen and consulted numerous declassified military records through FOIA requests.

Through this painstaking process of collecting evidence and verifying data, Hastings formed the thesis that UFOs may be interested in mankind’s nuclear weapons. His theory rested on three recurring patterns:

• Systemic surveillance: Unidentified aircraft hover specifically over nuclear production plants, weapons storage facilities, and ICBM silos.
• Active interference: UFO presence coincided with simultaneous, unexplained system failures, rendering nuclear missiles inoperable or, in more disturbing instances, initiating launch sequences.
• Government cover-up: Witnesses consistently reported being sworn or forced to secrecy, including receiving non-disclosure directives from military investigators after these events.

These three patterns, corroborated across bases and continents, became the backbone of Hastings’s UFO-nukes thesis, and the throughline connecting every case he went on to investigate.

The interviews and FOIAs

Some of the most notable and high-profile cases Hastings investigated were:

• David H. Schuur (the Malmstrom activation incident): Describing it as one of the most alarming cases he recorded, Hastings interviewed retired ICBM launch officer David H. Schuur, who in the 1960s witnessed multiple nuclear missiles mysteriously initiate a launch sequence at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
  
  The likely culprit: bright UFOs hovering over the missile silos. Fortunately, Schuur and his crew managed to flip the inhibit switch, stopping the launch and ultimately preventing World War III from erupting.
• Colonel Charles Halt (the Rendlesham Forest/RAF Bentwaters incident): The retired RAF colonel confirmed on record that during the famous 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident, UFOs descended into the forest and beamed light into the base’s nuclear weapons bunkers.
• Byelokorovychi (Belokorovichy), Soviet Ukraine: Hastings’s investigation also led him to document similar UFO incursions in then-Soviet Ukraine, a crucial piece of evidence that the phenomenon wasn’t only an American Cold War anomaly but also a global one.

Hastings backed up his interviews with hard documentation. Using Freedom of Information Act requests, he obtained declassified military documents and cross-referenced them against witness accounts to verify the facilities’ actual history.

The national security implications

One of the most significant impacts of Robert L. Hastings’s investigation was giving voice to hundreds of retired military personnel and officials who had been silenced or pressured to remain silent about what they witnessed.

Long before Hastings began digging into UFO sightings at nuclear facilities, both the U.S. government and civilian UFO researchers already treated nuclear-site incursions as a national security concern. 

But it was Hastings who systematically compiled interviews, records, and documentation to argue that these weren’t just early Cold War spycraft. They were a pattern of interaction with nuclear hardware that spanned decades.

The book and documentary

Robert L. Hastings compiled his investigative research into a book published in 2008. Titled UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, it’s widely considered the definitive source on the UAP-nukes link.

An accompanying documentary, UFOs and Nukes: The Secret Link Revealed, was released eight years later. 

It features interviews with veteran launch officers and personnel involved in major incidents, most notably Bob Salas and Dr Robert Jacobs (of the 1964 Big Sur missile interception).

Hastings also ventured into personal territory when he co-authored Confession: Our Hidden Alien Encounters with Dr Bob Jacobs in 2019. Beyond his usual focus on the UAP-nuclear link, the book details involuntary, recurring personal encounters that he says served as the hidden catalyst for his research.

The lectures

Robert L. Hastings didn’t stop at books and filmmaking. He also embarked on a decades-long campus lecture tour, presenting at more than 500 colleges and universities. His goals included:

• Bypassing official secrecy and media stigma
• Reaching academic and open-minded audiences
• Seeking funding for ongoing investigations
• Attracting new military whistleblowers

Between the lecture circuit and his published research, Hastings built a reputation that was hard for the mainstream press to ignore.

In September 2010, Hastings, with Bob Salas as co-organiser, held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., presenting their findings on the UFO-nukes connection to mainstream media outlets. 

Even CNN livestreamed the entire event. 

The panellists included:

• Lt. Colonel Dwynne Arneson, who testified about personally handling classified message traffic confirming UFOs had deactivated multiple nuclear missile silos at Malmstrom AFB.
• Colonel Charles Halt, who recounted the 1980 Rendlesham Forest/RAF Bentwaters incident in front of major American media outlets.
• Captain Bruce Fenstermacher and Patrick McDonough, who presented accounts of unidentified craft and hardware disruptions at F.E. Warren AFB and Minot AFB.

The event remains one of the most significant public-disclosure moments in modern ufology, establishing a public record of claims that non-human intelligence had actively engaged with American nuclear deterrent systems during the Cold War.

What do the UFO community and sceptics say about Robert L. Hastings?

Critics point out that Hastings’s research doesn’t present new physical evidence. 

American scientific paranormal investigator Benjamin Radford, for instance, questioned the 2010 National Press Club event by asking:

…if extraterrestrial intelligences have been watching over humanity and are so concerned about nuclear weapons, why didn’t they prevent the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II?

Nevertheless, due to his rigorous, evidence-based approach to investigating UFO sightings at nuclear facilities, and avoiding pop-culture tropes, Hastings has earned respect from both the UFO community and mainstream sceptics alike.

Beyond his investigative skills, he’s widely credited with creating safe avenues for retired military personnel to break their silence and avoid the stigma associated with discussing UAPs.

What legacy has Robert L. Hastings carved in Ufology?

In 2010, Hastings stepped back from actively documenting and interviewing former servicemen due to health reasons. But he still appears on shows and podcasts as a guest and remains the leading voice on the UFO-nukes connection.

Hastings still monitors reports of missile silos mysteriously shutting down and alleged UAP encounters at military bases worldwide, proof that the curiosity first sparked in the 1960s hasn’t dimmed.

If you’re interested in learning about other researchers investigating the UFO-nukes connection, browse their profiles at UFO Connect.

FAQ

What is Robert L. Hastings’s theory about UFOs and nuclear weapons?

Hastings believes UFOs deliberately monitor and, at times, interfere with nuclear weapons systems – not as a hostile act, but as a warning about the dangers of the nuclear arms race.

Why is Robert L. Hastings considered a leading voice in the UFO community?

His conclusions are backed by more than 160 interviews with military servicemen and documentation obtained through FOIA requests, giving his UFO-nukes thesis more institutional weight than typical civilian UFO reports.

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