In December 2003, reports surfaced that Alazan rockets—originally developed by Soviet scientists to pre-empt hailstorms through a type of cloud seeding but later fitted with radioactive material—had disappeared from the sprawling weapons stockpiles of the Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika (or Transdniester Moldovan Republic), the separatist enclave better known as Transnistria that stretches along Moldova's eastern border with Ukraine.
On 8 May 2005, the London Times reported that an arms dealer in Bender, Transnistria, had offered to sell three Alazan rockets equipped with radioactive warheads to a Times reporter posing as the representative of an Algerian militant group.[1] [The Alazan was originally designed by Soviet scientists as a weather control rocket to prevent hail. After the weather control experiment failed, the rocket was later used for military purposes. It has a maximum length of 1.4 meters and range of 10 km.][