	Introduction

The United States and Russia signed a new START Treaty, officially known as the Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures to Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms , on April 8, 2010. New START entered into force on February 5, 2011, after the United States and Russia exchanged the instruments of ratification. The provisions were designed to build confidence in compliance with the specific limits and restrictions in the treaty, but they also provided a level of detail in information that contributed to each nation's general understanding of the other's forces and activities and helped build cooperation between them. It would also mandate the exchange of some telemetry generated during missile flight tests. It does not evaluate whether the provisions in the new START Treaty are sufficient to judge that the treaty is "effectively verifiable," but, instead, identifies some of the differences between the verification provisions in START and new START, then describes how these changes derive from differences in the limits in the two treaties. Monitoring and Verification in Arms Control

		The Components of a Verification Regime

Verification is the process that one country uses to assess whether another country is complying with an arms control agreement. To verify compliance, a country must determine whether the forces or activities of another country are within the bounds established by the limits and obligations in the agreement. A verifiable treaty contains an interlocking web of constraints and provisions designed to deter cheating, to make cheating more complicated and more expensive, or to make its detection more timely. During the 1970s, when the United States and Soviet Union were participating in the Strategic Arms Limitation (SALT) talks, the United States assessed a treaty to be "adequately verifiable" if it had high confidence that it could detect evidence of militarily significant violations in time to respond to the violations and offset any potential security risk they might create. For the most part, the parties to these treaties planned to rely on NTM to monitor the forces and activities of other participating states. However, even with the information collected by the monitoring mechanisms in START, the United States and Russia did not have the information needed to verify compliance with the Moscow Treaty. Monitoring and Verification in New START

The new START Treaty contains a monitoring and verification regime that resembles the regime in START, in that its text contains detailed definitions of items limited by the treaty; provisions governing the use of NTM to gather data on each side's forces and activities; an extensive database that identifies the numbers, types, and locations of items limited by the treaty; provisions requiring notifications about items limited by the treaty; and inspections allowing the parties to confirm information shared during data exchanges. The United States would still want to detect and deter Russian efforts to deploy extra missiles and warheads under new START. On-Site Inspections

			On-Site Inspections in START

The 1991 START Treaty contained 12 different types of on-site inspections. Assessing the Verification Regime in New START

Participants in the debate about the new START Treaty, both in the Senate and in the public at large, sought to compare the verification regimes in the two treaties to determine whether the regime in the new START Treaty can provide the United States with the information it needs to effectively verify Russian compliance.
The United States and Russia signed a new START Treaty on April 8, 2010, and the treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011. Many analysts, both in the United States and Russia, supported negotiations on a new treaty so that the two sides could continue to implement parts of the complex monitoring and verification regime in the 1991 START Treaty. This regime was designed to build confidence in compliance with the START and to provide transparency and cooperation during the treaty's implementation. The verification regime in the new START Treaty differs in some respects from the regime in START. These differences reflect an interest in reducing the cost and complexity of the regime, updating it to account for changes in the relationship between the United States and Russia, and tailoring it to address the monitoring and verification complexities presented by the new limits in the new treaty. The verification regime received scrutiny in both the Senate, which voted on December 22, 2010, to consent to ratification, and the public.
Verification is the process that one country uses to assess whether another country is complying with an arms control agreement. To verify compliance, a country must determine whether the forces or activities of another country are within the bounds established by the limits and obligations in the agreement. A verifiable treaty contains an interlocking web of constraints and provisions designed to deter cheating, to make cheating more complicated and more expensive, or to make its detection more timely. In the past, the United States has deemed treaties to be effectively verifiable if it has confidence that it can detect militarily significant violations in time to respond and offset any threat that the violation may create for the United States.
The United States and Russia rely on their own national technical means of verification (NTM) to collect most of the information needed to verify compliance with arms control agreements. But, since the 1980s, the treaties have also mandated that the two sides share information through data exchanges and notifications, and conduct on-site inspections to confirm that information. The verification regime in START used these monitoring measures not only to confirm that forces were consistent with the limits in the treaty, but also to detect and deter potential efforts to violate the treaty. With the end of the Cold War and the new relationship with Russia, the United States and Russia may both have more confidence in the other side's intent to comply with its arms control obligations. However, both will still want to monitor the other's forces and activities to confirm compliance and to foster cooperation and transparency.
This report reviews some of the monitoring and verification provisions in the new START Treaty and compares these with some of the provisions in the original START Treaty. It focuses, specifically, on differences between the treaties in the provisions governing the exchange of data, known as telemetry, generated during missile flight tests; provisions governing the monitoring of mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); and differences in the numbers and types of on-site inspections.
This report will be updated as needed.