The Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range, December 1973 — CIA File
This CIA Intelligence Information Report from December 1973 provides information on the Soviet Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range, including details about its facilities, weapons systems (System-75 SA-2 and System-300/Aldan warheads), rumored laser weapon research, and unidentified aerial…
Incident Overview
December 1973, in the USSR, CIA preserved a documentary record that was declassified and published on June 12, 2026 as part of the third tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
What the government released
This CIA Intelligence Information Report from December 1973 provides information on the Soviet Sary Shagan Weapons Testing Range, including details about its facilities, weapons systems (System-75 SA-2 and System-300/Aldan warheads), rumored laser weapon research, and unidentified aerial phenomenon observed at the site. A more redacted version of this report has been available on CIA’s public website.
Status of the case
Records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which means the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Where AARO has offered a likely source for an item — an infrared sensor aboard a military aircraft, a commercial camera, or a known optical effect — that attribution is the agency’s working assessment rather than a final determination. Conventional candidates such as drones, balloons, flares, satellites, parallax and forced-perspective artifacts, and ordinary aircraft remain on the table for any unresolved case absent better data than a single sensor pass or a witness recollection.