Arms control and satellites: early issues concerning national technical means
by Dwayne A. Day
Monday, October 10, 2022
In 1972, the United States and Soviet Union signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agreement, collectively known as SALT I. A phrase that appeared in the treaty is “national technical means of verification.” This was an agreement by the two parties that they would verify the treaty without on-site inspections, using their own assets. Both sides also agreed not to interfere with these “national technical means.”
“National technical means” served as a euphemism for each country’s technical intelligence systems. Although these assets included ground, airborne, and other intelligence collection systems, the primary intelligence collectors for treaty verification were satellites, which both countries had been operating for over a decade, but neither country publicly discussed, certainly not with each other. The story of how American intelligence satellites became used for treaty verification has received relatively little attention. Declassified documents now make it possible to explore the issues surrounding their acceptance for this task in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although classification still presents limitations. Surprisingly, there appears to have been little initial skepticism on the American side about the ability to verify strategic arms control treaties using satellites. In fact, there are indications that by the early 1970s there was an overestimation of their capabilities, although the people who developed and operated them were concerned about their limitations, as well as the misperception about what they could do versus their actual capabilities.
This article discusses how the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which managed the National Reconnaissance Program—a term encompassing the American satellite intelligence program—addressed this new task of treaty verification in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the challenges it presented to the NRO.
