From the late 1960s into the 1970s, the strategic arms control
talks with the United States required little or no technical
expertise, because of the relative simplicity of the task facing the
negotiators: they simply set numerical ceilings for individual
weapons systems. This task was easily accomplished by the
military experts who were involved in the preparation of the
documents; the Big Five required no additional information
upon which to make more complicated decisions. The
Instructions to the Delegation rarely had to be altered, and the
few changes that were made related mostly to emphasizing,
clarifying, or amplifying political goals or priorities rather than
to any issues dealing with the details of military technology. It
was only at the final stage of the SALT I talks--when the ABM
problem appeared on the agenda--that special technical
questions began to crop up which the members of the Politburo
Commission themselves were unable to resolve. It was at this
point that the Big Five had to turn to technical experts.

Initially during SALT I, Dmitri Ustinov personally
selected experts invited them to participate in discussions on a
case-by-case basis. The advice that the experts gave covered
such topics as major radar systems related to ballistic missile
defenses, and heavy ICBM. During the meetings of the Big
Five, however, its other members also sought advice from the

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