Kevin Toth
| Kevin Toth |
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Kevin Toth is a physicist at the University at Albany who has publicly investigated unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) from a scientific standpoint, with particular focus on UFO–nuclear weapon interactions, UAP propulsion, and the analysis of alleged crash-retrieved materials. He previously worked at NASA's Ames Research Center in the early 2000s in its Intelligent Systems Division, developing machine-learning algorithms for image analysis of Hubble Space Telescope data, where he declined an offer of security clearance in order to remain free to do open science.
Background
Toth grew up in Wisconsin and completed a PhD in physics at Montana State University in Bozeman. His interest in the UFO–nuclear connection began during his first weeks of graduate study in September 1988, when a professor mentioned that colleagues at Malmstrom Air Force Base had witnessed UFOs repeatedly interfering with nuclear missiles — a claim Toth initially dismissed as a joke, which became a running department reference. Approximately 25 years later, around 2015, Toth encountered Robert Hastings' press conference footage featuring Robert Salas and other Air Force personnel describing the Malmstrom shutdowns, and concluded the accounts were credible. He subsequently gave a talk on the subject in the University at Albany physics department that ran nearly three hours due to audience questions.
UFO–nuclear claim: the Malmstrom shutdowns
Toth describes the Malmstrom incidents — in which 30 nuclear missiles were lost to "UFO activity" during a span from September 1966 through March 1967 — as clearly documented and deeply troubling, citing the lack of military response as evidence of institutional suppression rather than disbelief. He states the phenomenon is reportedly global — occurring in the Soviet Union, France, and England, as well as the United States. He adds that a relative by marriage, stationed at Malmstrom from 1971–74, told him the shutdowns were common knowledge among personnel on base.
NASA and UAP suppression
Toth states that during his time at NASA, the agency had no institutional program addressing UAP, but that individual employees with UAP interests existed across the agency. He reports that he has since been approached by former NASA colleagues who disclosed interests in remote viewing and related phenomena. He also states that one current or former NASA employee wrote a CIA training manual for remote viewing — a fact he describes as publicly accessible but unremarked upon.
During his time at NASA Ames, Toth and a colleague attempted an unofficial project to digitally enhance and decode the top-secret memo visible in photographs of Roger Ramey taken at Roswell in 1947, intending to publish the methodology as a cover for the real goal of reading the memo. The effort was abandoned due to inadequate computing power (300 MHz machines, without access to the supercomputer).
UAP propulsion analysis
Toth has published analyses of UAP physics using the Nimitz "Tic Tac" case as a benchmark, estimating the object's acceleration at approximately 5,000 g's based on its apparent drop from 28,000 feet to sea level in approximately 0.78 seconds, compared to the F-35 airframe limit of 13 g's and a missile frame limit of approximately 60 g's. The power implied by this maneuver, he calculates, is approximately 1,100 gigawatts — exceeding the total nuclear power output of the United States — leading him to conclude that conventional propulsion is impossible and that the craft must interact with gravity or inertia in a fundamentally different way, possibly related to general-relativistic warp concepts.
Toth also cites a case involving the Royal New Zealand Navy frigate HMNZS Southland in the 1980s, in which an approximately 800-foot-long cylindrical unidentified submerged object closed a two-kilometer distance in 25 seconds — implying 3,500 mph underwater — without generating waves, while still registering on sonar.
Materials analysis
Toth's colleague Matthew Szydagis at the University at Albany has been developing a non-destructive neutron activation analysis technique for examining alleged UAP crash retrieval debris, irradiating samples with neutrons to create heavier isotopes and observing their decay in order to infer the original isotopic composition without dissolving the material, in contrast to the mass spectrometry method used by Garry Nolan at Stanford University. Toth also participated in the A Tear in the Sky (2021–2023) five-day field observation mission off Catalina Island, which produced the first university-supported UAP data collection mission known to have appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific paper, published in 2024 with Szydagis as lead author.
Malmstrom as a pattern
The Malmstrom shutdowns that first drew Toth's interest have been independently corroborated by multiple military witnesses. At the Disclosure Project press conference in 2001, former USAF missile launch officer Robert Salas, who was stationed at Malmstrom in 1967, testified that while he was 60 feet underground monitoring ten nuclear-tipped Minuteman missiles, a "bright glowing red" oval-shaped object hovered outside the front gate and his missiles began going into a no-go condition one after another, rendering them unlaunchable. A separate witness at the same event, communications officer Dwayne Arneson, said that a message had passed through his communications centre at Great Falls, Montana, stating that "a UFO was seen near the missile silos and the missiles were deactivated," and that the Boeing investigator who examined the missiles found them "perfect, clean" — with no technical explanation for the shutdown.
Bustamante and Jamison testimony
Former CIA intelligence officer Andrew Bustamante, who served as a missile crew commander and command post commander at Malmstrom Air Force Base, described experiencing a "very, very similar" missile shutdown event during his own service: "there was one specific incident when I was in Malmstrom where we had [an] occurrence that was very, very similar to the UFO reports that you've heard from... Salas." Bustamante stated that the shutdown involved "the systematic shutdown of missiles, several missiles" with "multiple witnesses, multiple reports," and that the formal report submitted up the chain of command received a response that simply read "thank you for submitting. The end" — with no operational explanation provided, which he described as "really, really unusual" for an incident involving operational weapon systems.
Targeting officer Bob Jamison, who investigated the 1967 Malmstrom shutdowns as a colleague of Robert Salas, stated in a separate interview that simultaneous missile failures of the kind reported were virtually impossible under normal conditions: "Is it possible they just malfunctioned? That doesn't happen. Very rarely does a missile malfunction and I don't think... much more rare would be two at the same time, but never ten."