Facundo Cordero (ankle), Scott Cummings (foot), Allan Dell (arm), Jack Dempsey (back), Huw Jones (calf), Ally Miller (calf), Murphy Walker (neck) and Rory Sutherland (groin) are sidelined for Saturday's match along with JP du Preez (knee), Ollie Smith (knee) and Sione Vailanu (knee) who have been out of action with long-term injuries.
Smith told The Offside Line: "I'm very proud to say that none of them is long-term. The long-term injuries are JP Du Preez, Sione Vailanu and Ollie Smith [all previously reported]. The rest of the guys are all recoverable.
"They are all being managed. Most of them trained this [Friday] morning with me in the non-23 training group. Scott Cummings is coming back from the injury he sustained on tour in the summer.
"Suz [Sutherland] obviously hasn't trained the way we train him before. That's a little bit of an overuse injury. We might see him in the next weeks. None of them are that serious. Jack Dempsey is the same thing. A little bit of player management."
There was less promising news about Murphy Walker, who has had a recurrence of the neck issue.
"Murphy unfortunately is a little bit long-term," admitted Smith. "He's still got about nine to 12 weeks to go after an injury sustained. It's a similar injury that he's had before. Obviously we're looking into that to see if we can fix that for him."
Another notable absentee from Glasgow's squad to face Ulster is George Horne, with Jamie Dobie starting at scrum-half and Ben Afshar covering from the bench.
"George is just not good enough... that's the thing," dead-panned Smith, before giving the real reason for Horne's absence.
"We obviously have other issues. Players can't be selected more than five times in a row, for example. There are 15 games on the trot for these players until Christmas. It's important to manage everybody. Obviously, we also want to bring Ben Ashfar through. We want to continue the work that's been done in the pre-season.
"Jamie has been in [returned for pre-season] earlier. George has just spent a little bit more than a week with us. George, Scott Cummings, Jack Dempsey, there's a bunch of people that are still on the road of the pre-season. He [Horne] is not selected because we want to give [Dobie] a chance. We trust these other boys to play their part. Then we can introduce George at the right time for everybody."
Smith also explained his selection of Tom Jordan at stand-off with Adam Hastings on the bench.
"Nothing just happens here. For one, Tom has done a great job. Why would we discard him as a fly-half? Not at all. Adam's come in to replace Ross Thompson as well as to add value.
"He's got his own particular flavour to the game. Is it fair to throw him in the first game? I think it's less fair to throw him with all the expectation in the first game than it is to start Sam Talakai [making his debut at tight-head prop] the first time. We have a process and we're going to stick to that.
"We want to get continuity from last season. Everything is not just up in arms. The process is just continuing from last year. Adam will, at the right time, get his opportunity to start.
"We're going to blend him in and make sure that there's no extra pressure on him to perform. There's enough expectation around the team. We don't want anything outside to interfere with what he can do on the pitch.
"Plus, I know that he's got some family obligations over the weekend [the memorial service for his Aunt Jenny is on Sunday]. No extra stress is going to be placed on him. We just want him to contribute and not feel any pressure to perform."