In a September 9 NewsNation interview, the physicist proposed that a disturbance in space-time could disrupt missile navigation; the report also cites a Pentagon account attributing the 1967 incident to a secret electromagnetic-pulse test, but includes no underlying records.
Physicist Kevin Knuth has offered a speculative explanation for accounts of missile failures at Malmstrom Air Force Base: if an anomalous craft could warp space-time, he said, it could interfere with intercontinental ballistic-missile navigation. Knuth made the remarks in a September 9, 2026, interview with NewsNation’s Ross Coulthart. The interview contains no new records showing that such a mechanism occurred at Malmstrom or that an anomalous craft caused the 1967 incident.
A proposed mechanism
NewsNation identified Knuth as a University at Albany SUNY physicist and former NASA Ames researcher. Discussing reports of unidentified aerial phenomena near the Montana installation, he said craft displaying extreme acceleration might be “warping space in some way,” because otherwise inertia would be fatal to occupants. He said a disturbance in space and time could disrupt missile navigation. “I don’t think they were trying to shut down the missiles,” Knuth said. “I think it was an accident.”
The 1967 account and a reported official explanation
The discussion concerns the event commonly called the Malmstrom UFO incident, which NewsNation dates to March 1967. Robert Salas, described in the report as a whistleblower, later said unidentified objects were seen over the Montana base while missiles shut down. Knuth also recounted an unverified secondhand account from a relative of his wife, an Air Force veteran stationed at Malmstrom, who claimed similar episodes had happened repeatedly. The recollection is testimony relayed by Knuth, not independently documented evidence of repeated missile shutdowns.
NewsNation reported that the Pentagon said in 2025 that a secret electromagnetic-pulse-device test caused the Malmstrom disruption. The report includes neither the underlying Pentagon document nor technical test data, and no response from Salas or Knuth to that explanation.
Editorial analysis
What the interview adds
Knuth’s comments propose a physical mechanism for the claimed effect on missile systems; they do not establish that space-time warping occurred, that a UFO was present or that it caused the failures. The dispute turns on contemporaneous records that could account for the shutdown and reported sightings, and how those records compare with the reported classified-test explanation.
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