Kirtland/Manzano landed-disc incident (Aug 8–9, 1980).

August 8–9, 1980 incident at the Manzano Weapons Storage Area adjacent to Kirtland AFB — then the largest underground nuclear-weapons-component repository in the Western world, on a restricted range shared by the Air Force Weapons Lab, Sandia Laboratories, the Defense Nuclear Agency, and DOE. Per an AFOSI report, three Security Policemen saw a bright light land in Coyote Canyon; minutes later a Sandia security guard sighted a disc-shaped object near a bunker (relayed via Sandia Security Chief Russ Curtis to AFOSI agent Richard Doty). Physicist Paul Bennewitz filmed lights over Manzano and was then targeted by Doty's documented disinformation campaign (forged 'alien' documents), which destroyed his mental health and seeded the Dulce-base mythology. Skeptics (Greg Bishop) propose the lights were Sandia's Starfire optical-tracking laser tests or early Sandia UAV prototypes.