Overview Treaty Summary Treaty Text and Documents Archived Treaty Developments
To return to the main Nuclear Disarmament Treaties and Agreements entry, see the Status of Arms Control Treaties and Agreements file

Treaty Status
Signed: 8 December 1987
Entered into force: 1 June 1988

Treaty Summary

The INF Treaty prohibits the United States and the USSR (and its successor states) from possessing land-based nuclear weapon delivery vehicles, including ballistic and cruise missiles, with ranges between 500km and 5,500km, and obligated them to eliminate existing weapons belonging to this category within three years of the treaty's entry into force. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the treaty was multilateralized through agreements between the United States and twelve former Soviet republics that the United States considered INF Treaty successor states. They included six former Soviet republics that had inspectable facilities on their territory: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. 

To verify the implementation of the provisions, the treaty established a system of on-site inspections that confirmed the declared inventory of banned systems and monitored their elimination, supplemented by permanent monitoring of manufacturing facilities that produced ballistic missile stages "outwardly similar" to the stages of missiles banned by the treaty. In accordance with these provisions, monitoring facilities were established at missile plants in Votkinsk, Russia, and Magna, Utah.  Inspection and monitoring activities are to end 13 years after the treaty's entry into force, although the treaty itself is of unlimited duration. In December 2000 representatives of the parties to the treaty signed an agreement on terminating inspection and monitoring activities that took effect on 31 May 2001.

Treaty Documents

Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of Their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missile: English and Russian text.   

INF On-Site Inspection Status. Issued by the On-Site Inspection Agency (currently part of the Defense Thread Reduction Agency), May 1996.[Entered 4/23/2001 MJ]

Page last updated 22 August 2001
Please see the Strategic Forces General Developments file for more recent developments.

Comments or questions? Contact Nikolai Sokov (nsokovATmiis.edu) at MIIS CNS.

This material is produced independently for NTI by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of and has not been independently verified by NTI or its directors, officers, employees, agents. Copyright © 2002 by MIIS.

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