Salarian Union

The salarian government, since at least the formation of the Council in 500 BCE, is called the Salarian Union. It is a labyrinthine web of matrilineal bloodlines, with political alliances formed through interbreeding.
In many ways, the salarian political network functions like the noble families of Earth’s Medieval Europe. Structurally, the government consists of fiefdoms, baronies, duchies, planets, and marches (colonization clusters). These are human nicknames, as the original salarian is unpronounceable. Each area is ruled by a single Dalatrass (matriarchal head-of-household) and represents an increasing amount of territory and prestige within the salarian political web.
Approaching 100 members, the first circle of a salarian's clan comprises parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins. The next circle includes second cousins, etc., and escalates to well over 1000 members. The fourth or fifth circle of a clan numbers into the millions. Salarian loyalty is greatest to their first circle and diminishes from there. Their photographic memories allow salarians to recognize all their myriad relatives.

Military

In principle, the salarian military is similar to the United Nations Space Command, a small volunteer army that focuses on maneuver warfare. What differentiates the salarians is not their equipment or doctrine, but their intelligence services and rules of engagement. The salarians believe that a war should be won before it begins.
The unquestioned superiority of their intelligence services allows them to use their small military to maximum effectiveness. Well before fighting breaks out, they possess complete knowledge of their enemy's positions, intentions, and timetable. Their powerful intelligence network is spearheaded in the field by the Special Tasks Group (STG), which is responsible for monitoring developing situations and taking necessary action, usually without the shackles of traditional laws and procedures. This may be as simple as scouting and information gathering, or as complex as ensuring a conveniently unstable political situation stays that way. The effectiveness of the STG during the Krogan Rebellion is what provided the template for the Council to establish their Spectre program immediately afterward.
In every war the salarians have fought, they struck first and without warning. For the salarians, to know an enemy plans to attack and let it happen is folly; to announce their own plans to attack is insanity. They find the human moral concepts of "do not fire until fired upon" and "declare a war before prosecuting it" incredibly naive. In defensive wars, they execute devastating preemptive strikes hours before the enemy's own attacks. On the offense, they have never issued an official declaration of war before attacking.
Biotics are virtually unknown in the salarian military. Those with such abilities are considered too valuable to be used as cannon fodder and are assigned to the intelligence services.
While capable of defending themselves against most threats, the salarians know that they are small fish in a universe filled with sharks. As a point of survival, they have cultivated strong alliances with larger powers, particularly with the turians. Though the relationship between the two species was rocky at first due to the krogan uplift fiasco, the salarians take pains to keep this relationship strong enough that anyone who might threaten them risks turian intervention.
The salarian navy has sixteen dreadnoughts, which is considerably less than the maximum they are allowed to build under the Treaty of Farixen. This slowdown in dreadnought production was a consequence of the increasing complexity of the salarians' designs. After covertly obtaining and researching stealth technology used by the SSV Normandy and Normandy SR-2, the salarians were able to produce dreadnoughts with stealth capabilities, a previously unthinkable feat. Salarian dedication to adopting bleeding-edge technology is also demonstrated by their ships' costly armament. Warships are equipped with the latest GARDIAN defense systems and utilize ultraviolet antiship lasers, which are more expensive and energy demanding than standard infrared lasers, but more effective. Even salarian scouting flotillas are armed with hull-mounted Thanix cannons.
Salarian STG units are equipped with a variety of extremely high tech weaponry including the Scorpion, a pistol capable of firing high explosive "sticky projectiles", and the Venom, a shotgun capable of firing micro-grenades. The salarian military also fields the A-61 Mantis Gunship.