The facility was built in 1982, ten kilometers from Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan, in the wake of the accident at Sverdlovsk. It was built to develop and produce large quantities of weaponized anthrax, almost 300 tons annually, in order to fill the production gap caused by a potential shutdown of their Sverdlovsk facility. Soviet leadership placed Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov (a.k.a. Ken Alibek) in charge of the base until his transfer to Moscow in 1987.