NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Treaty on Open Skies

The Treaty on Open Skies entered into force on January 1, 2002, and currently has 34 States Parties. It establishes a program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants. The treaty is designed to enhance mutual understanding and confidence by giving all participants, regardless of size, a direct role in gathering information about military forces and activities of concern to them. Open Skies is one of the most wide-ranging international efforts to date promoting openness and transparency of military forces and activities. The concept of "mutual aerial observation" was initially proposed by President Eisenhower in 1955; the treaty eventually signed was an initiative of President (and former Director of Central Intelligence) George H. W. Bush in 1989. Negotiated by the then-members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the agreement was signed in Helsinki, Finland, on March 24, 1992. The United States ratified it in 1993. January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... English Electric Canberra PR.9 photo reconnaissance aircraft CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft of the Canadian Air Force. ... Types of political territories include: A legally administered territory, which is a non-sovereign geographic area that has come under the authority of another government. ... Single European Act A treaty is a binding agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely states and international organizations. ... The presidential seal was first used by President Hayes in 1880 and last modified in 1959 by adding the 50th star for Hawaii. ... Eisenhower redirects here. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... George Herbert Walker Bush GCB (born June 12, 1924) was the 41st President of the United States of America serving from 1989 to 1993. ... 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... NATO 2002 Summit in Prague The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation[2] (NATO; French: ; also called the North Atlantic Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance, the Western Alliance, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949. ... Unofficial Seal of the Warsaw Pact Distinguish from the Warsaw Convention, which is an agreement among airlines about financial liability and the Treaty of Warsaw (1970) between West Germany and the Peoples Republic of Poland. ... Helsinki (pronounced with the stress on the first syllable in Finnish — think Helsin Ki), or Helsingfors in Swedish, is the capital of Finland. ... March 24 is the 83rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (84th in leap years). ... 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ...

Membership

The treaty is of unlimited duration and open to accession by other States. States of the former Soviet Union that have not already become States Parties to the treaty may accede to it at any time. Applications from other interested States are subject to a consensus decision by the Open Skies Consultative Commission (OSCC), the Vienna-based organization charged with facilitating implementation of the treaty, to which all States Parties belong. Eight states have acceded to the treaty since entry into force: Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Cyprus’s application for accession is pending before the OSCC. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Vienna (German: Wien ) is the capital of Austria, and also one of the nine States of Austria. ...

Basic elements of the treaty

Territory

The Open Skies regime covers the territory over which the State Party exercises sovereignty, including land, islands, and internal and territorial waters. The treaty specifies that the entire territory of a State Party is open to observation. Observation flights may only be restricted for reasons of flight safety; not for reasons of national security.

Aircraft

Observation aircraft may be provided by either the observing Party or (the "taxi option") by the observed Party, at the latter's choice. All Open Skies aircraft and sensors must pass specific certification and pre-flight inspection procedures to ensure that they are compliant with treaty standards. The official certified U.S. Open Skies aircraft is the OC-135B Open Skies (a military version of the Boeing 707). The United Kingdom's aircraft is a modified Hawker Siddeley Andover CMk 1, XS 641. The OC-135B Open Skies United States Air Force observation aircraft supports the Open Skies Treaty. ... View of the port (left) number 1 & 2 Pratt & Whitney JT3D jet engines of a British Caledonian Boeing 707 showing the peculiarity of the number 1 engine mount which is different from the other three. ... The Hawker Siddeley Andover is a twin engined turboprop transport aircraft produced by Hawker-Siddeley and developed from the Avro 748 airliner. ...

Canada uses the CC-130 Hercules aircraft equipped with a "SAMSON" sensor pod to conduct flights over other treaty nations. The pod is a converted CC130 fuel tank modified to carry the permitted sensors, along with associated on-board mission systems. A consortium of nations consisting of Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal, and Spain own and operate this system. The costs of maintaining the SAMSON Pod are shared, based on each nation's flight quota and actual use. The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a four-engine turboprop cargo aircraft and the main tactical airlifter for military forces worldwide. ...

Sensors

Open Skies aircraft may have video, optical panoramic and framing cameras for daylight photography, infra-red line scanners for a day/night capability, and synthetic aperture radar for a day/night all weather capability. Photographic image quality will permit recognition of major military equipment (e.g., permit a State Party to distinguish between a tank and a truck), thus allowing significant transparency of military forces and activities. Sensor categories may be added and capabilities improved by agreement among States Parties. All sensors used in Open Skies must be commercially available to all signatories. Imagery resolution is limited to 30 centimetres.

Quotas

Each State Party is obligated to receive observation flights per its passive quota allocation. Each State Party may conduct as many observation flights - its active quota - as its passive quota. During the first three years after EIF, each State will be obligated to accept no more than seventy-five percent of its passive quota. Since the overall annual passive quota for the United States is 42, this means that it will be obligated to accept no more than 31 observation flights a year during this three-year period. Only two flights were requested over the United States during 2005, by the Russian Federation and Republic of Belarus Group of States Parties (which functions as a single entity for quota allocation purposes). The United States is entitled to 8 of the 31 annual flights available over Russia/Belarus. Additionally, the United States is entitled to one flight over Ukraine, which is shared with Canada.

Data sharing and availability

Imagery collected from Open Skies missions is available to any State Party upon request for the cost of reproduction. As a result, the data available to each State Party is much greater than that which it can collect itself under the treaty quota system.

History

At a Geneva Conference meeting with Soviet Premier Bulganin in 1955, President Eisenhower proposed that the United States and Soviet Union conduct surveillance overflights of each other's territory to reassure each country that the other was not preparing to attack. The fears and suspicions of the Cold War led Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khruschev to reject Eisenhower's proposal. Thirty-four years later, the Open Skies concept was reintroduced by President George H. W. Bush as a means to build confidence and security between all North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Warsaw Pact countries. -- W P Talk 00:44, 30 September 2005 (UTC) Categories: Possible copyright violations ... Premier of the Soviet Union is the commonly used English term for the offices of Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars of the USSR (ÐŸÑ€ÐµÐ´ÑÐµÐ´Ð°Ñ‚ÐµÐ»ÑŒ Ð¡Ð¾Ð²ÐµÑ‚Ð° ÐÐ°Ñ€Ð¾Ð´Ð½Ñ‹Ñ… ÐšÐ¾Ð¼Ð¸ÑÑÐ°Ñ€Ð¾Ð² Ð¡Ð¡Ð¡Ð ; Predsedatel Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov SSSR) (1923-1946) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (ÐŸÑ€ÐµÐ´ÑÐµÐ´Ð°Ñ‚ÐµÐ»ÑŒ Ð¡Ð¾Ð²ÐµÑ‚Ð° ÐœÐ¸Ð½Ð¸ÑÑ‚Ñ€Ð¾Ð² Ð¡Ð¡Ð¡Ð ; Predsedatel Soveta Ministrov SSSR) (1946-1991), who... Image:Nikolay Bulganin. ... 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior. ... For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ... Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (Russian: Ники́та Серге́евич Хрущёв) (nih-KEE-tah khroo-SHCHYOFF) (April 17, 1894 – September 11, 1971) was the leader of the Soviet Union... NATO 2002 Summit in Prague The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, the Atlantic Alliance or the Western Alliance, is an international organisation for collective security established in 1949, in support of the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington, DC, on 4 April 1949. ...

In February 1990, an international Open Skies conference involving all NATO and Warsaw Pact countries opened in Ottawa, Canada. Subsequent rounds of negotiations were held in Budapest, Hungary, Vienna, Austria, and Helsinki, Finland. See Budapest (band) for the British melancholic post-grunge band. ... This article is about the city and federal state in Austria. ...

On March 24, 1992, the Open Skies Treaty was signed in Helsinki by Secretary of State James Baker and foreign ministers from 23 other countries. The treaty entered into force on January 2, 2002, after Russia and Belarus completed ratification procedures. March 24 is the 83rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (84th in leap years). ... 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... James Addison Baker III (born 28 April 1930 in Houston, Texas) served as the Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagans first administration, United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988 in the second Reagan administration, and Secretary of State in the administration of President George H... January 2 is the second day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ...

In November 1992, President Bush assigned responsibility for overall training, management, leadership, coordination and support for U.S. Open Skies observation missions to the On-Site Inspection Agency (OSIA), now a part of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Until entry into force in January 2002, DTRA support for the treaty involved participating in training and joint trial flights (JTFs). The U.S. has conducted over 70 JTFs since 1993. By March 2003, DTRA had successfully certified 16 camera configurations on the OC-135B aircraft. They also had contributed to the certification of the Bulgarian AN-30, Hungarian AN-26, POD Group (consisting of Belgium, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain) C-130H, Russian AN-30, and Ukrainian AN-30. The United States successfully flew its first Open Skies mission over Russia in December 2002. 1992 was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... 2002 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December A timeline of events in the news for January, 2002. ... March 2003 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December - â†’ // Events March 1, 2003 Iraq disarmament crisis: The Turkish speaker of Parliament voids the vote accepting U.S. troops involved in the planned invasion of Iraq into Turkey on constitutional grounds. ...

With entry into force of the treaty, formal observation flights began in August 2002. During the first treaty year, States Parties conducted 67 observation flights. In 2004, States Parties conducted 74 missions, and 110 missions are planned for 2005. The OSCC continues to address modalities for conducting observation missions and other implementation issues. August 2002 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December // See also: Afghanistan timeline August 2002 Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A Palestinian suicide bombing claims 9 lives, near Safed; there is a shooting attack in Jerusalem, claiming 2; there is an attack upon a settler family, killing... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

References

This article includes public domain text from the following United States Government sources: The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

The United States Department of State, often referred to as the State Department, is the Cabinet-level foreign affairs agency of the United States Government, equivalent to foreign ministries in other countries. ... The Bureau of Arms Control is a bureau of the United States Department of State that is responsible for developing policy in the areas of conventional, chemical/biological, and nuclear forces, for supporting arms control negotiations, for implementing existing agreements in these areas, and for advising the Secretary on related... June 13 is the 164th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (165th in leap years), with 201 days remaining. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Contents

Membership

Basic elements of the treaty

Territory

Aircraft

Sensors

Quotas

Data sharing and availability

History

References

See also

External links

Contents

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Basic elements of the treaty

Territory

Aircraft

Sensors

Quotas

Data sharing and availability

History

References

See also

External links

Membership