Russia has started an upgrade of the Neman-P radar located at the Sary-Shagan test site. The radar (see the map below) was designed in the late 1960s by one of the three competing missile defense projects (the other two being the A-35 and a project that eventually became A-135).
At the time, Neman, was promoted as a radar that could provide better target discrimination capability than its competitors. The pilot radar that was built in Sary-Shagan, Neman-P, apparently has been used in various tests of ballistic missile reentry vehicles launched from Kapustin Yar. It probably began operations in 1981 and has been used in this role ever since.
The book
Comments
Earlier the Neman-P already had two stages of modernization in 2003-2008:
http://www.vko.ru/oruzhie/neman-na-balhashe
Neman-P photo gallery:
http://vpk-news.ru/photographs/gallery/443#slide-2-field_gallery-11734
I'd note that if you look at the Panoramio pix of it in Google Earth it doesn't seem to have been maintained very well. Not quite as totally trashed as a lot of other things at Sary Shagan, but definitely a fixer-upper. It would be interesting to get a recent satellite picture of the facility to see if there are signs of renewed activity such as roads, security, etc.
Many signs of activity there are available:
http://dev2.vpk-news.ru/photographs/gallery/769#slide-14-field_gallery-12017
:-)
@ Aleksandr Stukalin,
Thanks! It turns out that just googling on в/ч 06544 produces a lot of interesting material.
Also, the vko.ru article is very good. It contains a lot of history I hadn't known,including that Neman-P was the first use of range-doppler techniques for ABM target discrimination.
The detailed description of the Sary-Shagan Test Range as of 1993:
http://veteran.priozersk.com/museum/1762
The paragraph about works on the echeloned non-nuclear ABM defense with exoatmospheric interceptors is interesting.