CIA Project 'Other A' Warps and Scours Secret Matrix Targets

By Miriam Adler · August 9, 2026

Targets became blackened, warped and pitted during a high-energy test, though the identity of the facility and the final analysis results remain missing from the record.

A metallic, highly polished, bullet-shaped object arrives at a site in a heavily reinforced shipping container. This is the starting point of a summary titled 'Other A,' found in the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room. The document describes a technical experiment, though it does not name the facility, the date of the operation, or the identity of the source providing the information. It describes a site where the main component is "very long, thin and raised," characterized by a shape that is higher in the middle and lower to the sides.

A 'Conduit' for Something

The document notes that in cross section, the structure gives the "impression of a 'conduit' for something." It does not say what that something is, only that the site requires high levels of electromagnetic energy to function. The summary adds that part or all of this conduit is composed of segments, and there is a "sense of very dense or heavy metal" associated with the site.

As a former radar officer, the terminology here—specifically the emphasis on electromagnetic energy and the physical geometry of the site—suggests a focus on transmission or projection. However, the record is careful to maintain distance. It does not state the site was a conduit, but that it gave the impression of one. The summary includes the notation "NFI," or no further information, regarding the specific dimensions and layout of the raised structure.

Black to Gold

The bullet-shaped object mentioned at the outset is placed at the closed end of the conduit. According to the summary, this object is itself a container for a corrosive substance. The record describes a color shift: the substance appears black while inside the container but "changes color (perhaps to gold)" as it moves out of the container and toward the objective.

Here, the record hits a wall of uncertainty. A parenthetical note explicitly states that the source could not determine whether the metallic object itself, the corrosive substance it held, or "something else" was actually directed down the conduit. This gap in the record is critical. We have a description of a delivery system—the reinforced container and the polished bullet—and a description of a chemical change, but the actual mechanism of transport remains an unknown.

Blackened, Warped, Pitted

The objective of the experiment was to impact a rectangular target. The document describes this target as being "made up of a substance on a matrix." To ensure the impact occurred, the record says several or many "things" were projected at it.

The result of these impacts was a physical degradation of the target. The summary records that the action caused the target to become "blackened, warped, pitted, eroded and scoured." Following this impact, the target was "studied, examined and analyzed."

The record ends there. There is no mention of what the "substance on a matrix" was, what the projected "things" consisted of, or what the analysis of the scoured target actually revealed.

Outside of this specific summary, the term "Other" appears frequently in government archival indexing. The US National Archives holds various files titled "Papers and Other Historical Records" and "Meteorological and Other Equipment," while the NSArchive maintains records of district court petitions and EPA talking points that fall under similar broad categorizations. In the context of philosophy or psychology, "the Other" refers to the concept of the self in relation to the outside world, but in this CIA file, 'Other A' is simply a label for a technical process involving high energy and corrosive materials.

The summary leaves us with a sequence of events: the arrival of a reinforced container, the placement of a polished object in a metallic conduit, the projection of unknown entities at a matrix target, and the subsequent warping of that target. Whether the gold-colored substance was the agent of erosion or if the electromagnetic energy played a role in the "scouring" is not recorded. The file concludes with the fact that the target was analyzed, but the results of that analysis are missing from the summary.