In the beginning, Kapustin Yar used technology, material, and scientific support gained from the defeat of Germany in World War II.

The towns of Znamensk and Kapustin Yar (air base) were built nearby to serve the missile test range.

In public opinion, Kapustin Yar has been compared to as the "Russian Roswell";[1] the place where the USSR discovered, investigated or captured alien ships (UFOs).

[3] The 4th Missile Test Range "Kapustin Yar" was established by a decree of the Soviet government in "On Questions of Jet Propelled Weapons" on 13 May 1946.

Until then, builders and testers lived in tents, dugouts, temporary buildings, and peasant izba in the village of Kapustin Yar.

From 18 October to 13 November 1947, eleven V-2 rockets were launched; seven achieved the targeted range (two with a large deviation from the set trajectory) and four failed.

[7] From 1947 to 1957, Kapustin Yar was the only place to test Soviet ballistic missiles, including the R-1 (September–October 1948, September–October 1949), R-2 (September–October 1949), R-5 Pobeda (March 1953), R-12 Dvina, and R-14 Chusovaya, among others.

[9][10][note 1] The aircraft was launched from Giebelstadt Air Base and flew over the Volga at an altitude of more than 20 km, then approached Kapustin Yar.

[note 2] The success of the operation gave impetus to the development of satellite and aerial photography programs to obtain pictures of military facilities in the USSR and other socialist countries.

According to open data, since the 1950s, at least 11 nuclear explosions have been conducted at the Kapustin Yar test site[11] (between altitudes of 300 m and 5.5  km), the total capacity of which is approximately 65 times the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

[citation needed] In 1994, the 4 GPC Russian Ministry of Defence entered the test site Air Defense Forces.

In 1998, the "Sary-Shagan" test site (located in south-eastern Kazakhstan and rented by Russia) was removed from the Air Defense troops and reassigned to the 4th State Central Interspecific polygon.

One of the key missions of the 2003 computer game UFO: Aftermath is the task of finding documents in an underground base located at the Kapustin Yar test site.