For decades, the story of UFOs interacting with nuclear systems has been mentioned in congressional hearings, intelligence briefings, and scattered witness reports. Most cases rely on limited documentation or restricted testimony. The release of the Russian Ministry of Defense UFO files has changed that landscape permanently. These documents were gathered during a sweeping Soviet investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena that operated across military boundaries and appeared near sites linked to national strategic power. The most important case in these files is the 1982 incident at a missile base near the hamlet of Usovo in what is now Ukraine. It is the closest the world has come to a nuclear launch initiated during the presence of unidentified craft.

The release of these materials was made possible through the work of investigative journalist George Knapp, who acquired the documents from post Soviet sources in the 1990s. His decision to bring these files into public view provides the strongest evidence available from any nation that an unidentified intelligence demonstrated an ability to observe and influence nuclear command systems. The files were originally maintained by the Soviet Ministry of Defense and include stamped statements, diagrams, and witness reports written by trained officers who had no motive to embellish or create narratives. Their reports were written as part of duty, not speculation.

At the core of the archive is a single night in October 1982 when several high ranking officers observed structured objects in the sky above a nuclear missile facility. These objects operated silently, shifted positions rapidly, changed shape, and maintained coordinated formations. Their presence coincided with a sequence inside the launch control system that stunned the officers responsible for protecting the site. The system accepted codes that would have placed missiles into combat readiness. No one entered the codes. No drills were scheduled. The system behaved as if someone with the proper authority had initiated a serious sequence. When the unidentified objects left the airspace, the system returned to its normal state.