Man Snaps Photo of Unknown Object Near ICBM Missile Silos

Photo of Object Taken by Witness (Note Object is in Front of Sun)

Location Where Photo Taken & Minot AFB

Date of Sighting: December 23, 2005
Time of Sighting: 2:30 PM CST
Duration of Sighting: Unknown
Date Reported: December 29, 2005
Location of Sighting: Max, North Dakota (Western Central North Dakota About 20 Miles South of Minot Air Force Base)
Latitude:  47.8 Degrees N
Longitude: 101.283 Degrees W
Number of Witnesses: One
Weather: Cloudy

Description (In Witness's Own Words With Minor Edits): Hi I live in Max N.Dak, I took the photo at about 2:30 pm. and yes the bright spot in the photo is the sun. There was a lot of cloud cover that day, and the clouds where moving really fast that day. I live on the outer edge of town. The interesting thing, when I think about it is what ever that thing is it was almost right above a US Air Force sub station for the missile alert teams here. It is always manned 24 hours a day. We have a large number of ICBM missile silos here and there are two of them within 10 miles radius of here. I never thought anything of the photo until I put up on my desk top, when I enlarged it using windows XP photo imaging I could tell that it was not a speck or a spot, because it is not round. it looks more like a top or acorn to me. I did not see this thing when I first took the photo. I hope maybe you can enlarge it and see what you think. I am sorry about the quality of the picture, but I took it with a cheaper digital camera and it was brand new, and none of the other photos I took that day had any dots or specks in them thanks and let me know what you think.

Additional Report by Witness - Contact With Minot Air Force Base. I never did tell you that I contacted Minot Air Force Base, and told them about it. They just seemed to want to ignore it, and told me to send the picture to an email site. When I told them that I have had many friends that were pilots up here in the past, that had told me they had seen many things on recon and training flights, they just wanted to ignore that too. One of my buddies up here that flies night missions said that I would be amazed at the things he has seen almost every 8 out of ten times he goes up. He told me that when he reported what he had on his radar, ground control told him they saw nothing. He also told me on 2 missions he even had radar lock on these things. He said to me you know what bothers me most? And then he said when one of planes has radar lock on something they on the ground know this. Oh by the way he told me that there is no way that that thing could not be a weather balloon, because anything even getting close to a military installation would be shot down, if they did not know what it was. If it was hovering above one of our sites ,so must have been moving real fast . In closing he said to me,THEY KNEW SOMETHING WAS THERE. Hope this helps a little more for you and thanks again.

Investigator's Notes: The object in this photo doesn't appear to have any conventional explanation. It could be a balloon, but weather balloons are launched about 6 am and 6 pm in this area.  Therefore no weather balloon would have been airborne at this time. It is interesting that this sighting was close to a missile silo.  Many incidents have been recorded in the 1960s in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota of UFO activity near missile silos. The additional information provided by the witness regarding pilots at Minot Air Force Base is most revealing.  According to the pilots regular unidentified objects are seen and detected by radar.