Water Planet

Thursday, August 02, 2007

SALT I VS SALT II

Had the International History Fact Test today.

There was a question on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talk (SALT), between the Soviet Union and the United States of America during the Cold War.

Here are some background information about the two talks , SALT I and SALT II.

SALT I is the common name for the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty Agreement, but also known as Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty. SALT I froze the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels, and provided for the addition of new submarine-launched balistic missile (SLBM) launchers only after the same number of older intercontinental balistic missile (ICBM) and SLBM launchers had been dismantled.

Negotiations lasted from November 17, 1969 until May 1972 in a series of meetings beginning in Helsinki, with the U.S. delegation headed by Gerald C. Smith, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Subsequent sessions alternated between Vienna and Helsinki. After a long deadlock, the first results of SALT I came in May 1971, when an agreement was reached over ABM systems. Further discussion brought the negotiations to an end on May 26, 1972 in Moscow when Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement Between The United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Certain Measures With Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. A number of agreed statements were also made. This helped improve relations between the USA and the Soviet Union.

SALT II was a second round of talks from 1972 to 1979 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which sought to curtail the manufacture of strategic nuclear weapons. It was a continuation of the progress made during the SALT I talks. SALT II was the first nuclear arms treaty which assumed real reductions in strategic forces to 2250 of all categories of delivery vehicles on both sides. SALT II helped the U.S. to discourage the Soviets not to arm their third generation ICBMs of SS-17, SS-19 and SS-18 types with MIRVs. The USSR's missile design bureaus had developed in the late 1970s experimental versions of these missiles equipped with anywhere from 10 to 38 thermonuclear warheads each. Additionally, the Soviets secretly agreed to reduce Tu-22M production to thirty aircraft per year and not to give them an intercontinental range. It was particularly important for the US to limit Soviet efforts in the INF forces rearmament area. The SALT II Treaty banned new missile programs (a new missile defined as one with any key parameter 5% better than in currently deployed missiles), so both sides were forced to limit their new strategic missile types development although US preserved their most essential programs like Trident and cruise missiles. In return, the USSR could exclusively retain 308 of its so-called "heavy ICBM" launchers of the SS-18 type.
An agreement to limit strategic launchers was reached in Vienna on June 18, 1979, and was signed by Leonid Brezhnev and President of the United States Jimmy Carter. Six months after the signing, the Soviet Union deployed troops to Afghanistan, and in September of the same year some senators like "Mr. Boening" (Henry M. Jackson) unexpectedly discovered the so-called "Soviet brigade" on Cuba. As such, the treaty was never ratified by the United States Senate. Its terms were, nonetheless, honored by both sides until 1986 when the Reagan Administration withdrew from SALT II after accusing the Soviets of violating the pact.

The question in the test was this:

"What are the differences between SALT I and SALT II"

The best answer given:

"SALT II is saltier than SALT !"

-_-

mE posted at 2:17 PM