(Web Desk) - Fears of an alien invasion in the US took hold in the 1960s and 70s after reports of UFOs hovering over military bases flooded the nation.
Now, decades later, a UFO expert has claimed that the extraterrestrial spaceships did visit 'every major nuclear missile base' and continue to do so to this day.
Robert Hastings, who has interviewed many Army personnel about the bizarre sightings, said: 'The ones that are currently operational, have been visited repeatedly year after year according to the sources that I have interviewed.'
Hastings recently made waves when he revealed more than 120 former service members had come forward about their encounters with flying objects near nuclear weapon storage and testing grounds.
'A public, grassroots effort must be made in the interim to understand – as best as possible, using the data gathered thus far – the nature and intentions of those who pilot the UFOs,' Hastings penned in his recent book recounting the interviews.
'Or perhaps they have a use for our planet, let's say for scientific purposes, and know that global nuclear warfare will disrupt their data-gathering and/or experiments.'
In his book, UFOs and Nukes, he revealed that investigators are prevented from properly probing the cases because of dubious layers of classification.
One thing is for sure, however, it is 'obvious' that if there are extraterrestrial visitors, they are 'greatly interested in our nuclear weapons.'
Hastings' comments echo a study released in June that analyzed over 500 of the best-supported UFO cases from the heights of the Cold War, which concluded that 'this intelligence understands atomics, and they understand atomic weaponry.'
UFO reports over America's nuclear arsenal appeared to shift from sites where the bombs were made to missile silos and US air bases as the Cold War arms race grew.
The study was conducted by a retired US Air Force staff sergeant, data analyst affiliated with Harvard's UFO-hunting Galileo Project Ian Porrit and a research team.
The group focused on official military and police reports of UFOs from 1945 to 1975, avoiding poorly supported accounts and ambiguous newspaper stories, to focus on cases with multiple witnesses and signal evidence, like radar.