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FOBS, or "Fractional Orbit Bombardment System"
FOBS entries (which the Soviet government denies ever took place) as "flying saucers"? It is easy to see that official Soviet censors would have initially welcomed the public misidentification of the FOBS entries. After all, officially, space systems such as the FOBS were illegal and hence the USSR would never test them. In fact, since the FOBS system was readily recognized in the West as an orbital H-bomb carrier best suited for nuclear sneak attack, the less the world knew about it, the better for Moscow's public peace posturing -- especially following the writing of a 1967 treaty outlawing the placement of H-bombs in orbit (which is exactly what the FOBS was designed to do). Despite the fact that Moscow sanctimoniously signed the treaty later that year, it continued to test FOBS vehicles (now outlawed by international law) long afterwards.

But these flaming UFO sightings in 1967 had ignited tremendous public interest in the Soviet Union. Up until that point, the Soviet population had been relatively insulated from the flying saucer phenomenon, which for 20 years had been exciting enthusiasts in the United States, France, South America, Japan, and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the world. Officially, Soviet commentators had denounced the topic as a product of capitalistic war hysteria and money-grubbing yellow journalism. By late 1967, however, the hundreds of thousands of new witnesses eager to make up for lost time, official Soviet policy had changed --briefly.

In Moscow, a group of UFO enthusiasts organized a private study committee. The chief mover evidently was Feliks Zigel, an astronomy professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute. A retired general, Porfiny Stolyarov, was chosen chairman, and it is by that name ("the Stolyarov Committee") that the group is known. After a series of very successful public meetings, the group was invited to appear on Moscow National Television on November 10. There, they invited watchers nationwide to send in reports of UFO sightings for scientific analysis. It is primarily from that body of reports that 10 years later the Gindilis team selected 256 most typical for analysis.

So by late 1967 the Soviet government was faced with the uncomfortable prospect of its citizens scanning the skies and reporting all strange lights they saw -- and all with official approval. Yet many of these lights were being caused by activities Moscow did not want to acknowledge. What started out as an ill-considered but apparently harmless pandering to public curiosity now must have seemed to be getting out of control.

It wasn't just the FOBS spaceshots that needed coverups. The top secret new military satellite center at Plesetsk north of Moscow had opened the year before for polar-orbit spy satellites. Sooner or later, one was bound to be launched in twilight when its sunlit rocket exhaust plumes would standout like a torch in the sky. With the sanctioned UFO mania sweeping the USSR, such reports were bound to be published widely, betraying strong hints about the hitherto concealed existence of the military space center.

And that is exactly what happened on December 3, three weeks after the televised UFO appeal. The Cosmos-194 Vostok-class spy satellite blasted off from Plesetsk at 3 p.m. local time, shortly before sunset. As it rocketed northeastwards along the Arctic coastline, its contrails were visible to eyewitnesses in the wintry night below. It became (and to this day remains) another great Russian UFO; it is known as the "Kamennyy UFO" since it was spotted from an aircraft on route from "Mys Kamennyy" (Cape Stoney) in the New Siberian Islands to Moscow.