SALT I — the 1972 Interim Agreement on strategic offensive arms

Assembled from 9 blocks · 1 evidence · 2 related

1. Story
2. The offensive half of what was signed in Moscow on 26 May 1972 at the end of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Formally an executive agreement rather than a treaty, and formally interim — five years — it did not reduce anything. It froze the number of intercontinental ballistic missile launchers and submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers at roughly the numbers each side had built or had under construction, and it allowed increases in submarine launchers only in exchange for retiring older land-based ones. Two features make it more interesting than the numbers. First, it counted launchers, not warheads, which meant it did nothing about the technology already arriving — multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, which put several warheads on one missile and drove the totals up sharply through the decade that followed. Second, verification was by "national technical means", meaning reconnaissance satellites, and each side undertook not to interfere with the other's: the agreement legalised mutual surveillance as the price of mutual limitation.
3. Knowledge
4. SALT I — the 1972 Interim Agreement on strategic offensive arms
5. Connections
6. SALT I and the ABM Treaty are signed in Moscow
7. START I is signed in Moscow
8. Evidence
9. Supports the date and character of the SALT I offensive-arms freeze, its five-year term, its counting of launchers rather than warheads, and the use of national technical means for verification. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted; no launcher ceiling is quoted in this pack for that reason.