With scarcely a word of acknowledgement from the Pentagon or the Kremlin, the US and Russia have implemented a treaty that took 47 years to enact and could have saved the lives of countless Cold Warriors.
The treaty is called "Open Skies." And despite assurances from the US State Department that the pact is a positive step in bilateral relations, many military reconnaissance experts worry the agreement may compromise America’s national security.
President Dwight Eisenhower first proposed that the US and the Soviet Union allow aerial reconnaissance flights over each other’s territory in July 1955. Claiming the initiative would be used for extensive spying, Moscow rejected Eisenhower’s proposal.
In the ensuing years, many Cold War military and intelligence operatives sacrificed their lives attempting to obtain information about "the other side" that might have been easily acquired if Open Skies reconnaissance flights had been allowed to occur. The best-known casualty during this era was Francis Gary Powers, a US Air Force Captain whose U-2 spy plane was shot down May 1, 1960 while flying a covert mission over Russia for the Central Intelligence Agency. President George Herbert Walker Bush revived the idea of Open Skies in May 1989, and negotiations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact started in February 1990. Signed March 24, 1992, the Open Skies Treaty permits each state-party to conduct short-notice, unarmed, reconnaissance flights over the others’ entire territories to collect data on military forces and activities. Observation aircraft used to fly the missions must be equipped with sensors that enable the observing party to identify significant military equipment, such as artillery, fighter aircraft, and armored combat vehicles.
Currently, aircraft conducting an Open Skies mission — the US and its allies fly modified Boeing OC-135 "Stratotankers," the Russians and former Soviet Bloc countries fly Antonov-30s — can only use "wet film" panoramic or framing cameras with an optical resolution of 30 centimeters. Negotiations are underway to allow Open Skies aircraft to also employ relatively unsophisticated electronic intelligence-gathering technology like video and infrared cameras. But a surveillance expert tells "Strategic Policy" that these talks "are unlikely to yield an agreement among the Treaty signatories because so many countries are scared to death the imagery can be manipulated and — therefore — rendered more militarily significant." Although orbiting reconnaissance satellites can provide the same, and even more detailed, information, not all of the Open Skies treaty signatories have such capabilities.
"That’s probably one of handful of advantages I see in Open Skies: The intelligence boon it can bring to countries who don’t have satellites or sophisticated air surveillance technologies," says a defense authority in Washington, who spoke to "Strategic Policy" on condition of anonymity. "This is because images acquired during an Opens Skies flight are shared with every country that has signed the treaty." However, the defense expert — who regularly advises the Pentagon on reconnaissance issues — says he is concerned Open Skies imagery could be misused: "What happens if one of the signatory countries shares this information with an non-signatory country that has hostile intentions?" the defense authority asks.This concern is dismissed by the US Department of State, which negotiated Open Skies. "Frankly, this is not what you would call ‘whiz-bang’ imagery," says a State Department spokesman familiar with Open Skies. "The images are really only good for detecting the massing of forces."
The State Department official acknowledges that "there is some concern that the imagery could be used for targeting" military facilities and other sensitive sites. "But we recently have come to an agreement in Vienna that this material is to be treated as sensitive information." State Department official adds, "This means that Open Skies information is exempted from FOIA, thus ensuring it won’t be publicly available. (FOIA, the US Freedom of Information Act, permits the public to have access to government information, including declassified secrets.) Of the 27 signatories to Open Skies — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Kyrgyzstan,Russia, Slovakia, Turkey, Ukraine, UK, and the US — all but Kyrgyzstan have ratified the accord and are now states-parties. Under the terms of Opens Skies, all of a state-party’s territory can be overflown. No territory can be declared off-limits by the host nation. — And, herein, lies an issue that deeply concerns the defense authority who spoke anonymously to "Strategic Policy": "The Sept. 11 attack has heightened US sensitivity about where aircraft can and cannot fly. The airspace near the White House in Washington, for example, is very sensitive. So are several military facilities. What happens," the expert speculates," if an Open Skies signatory country files a flight plan over one of these places. Do we refuse, and break the Treaty?"
The defense authority is also concerned about the rigid — and somewhat complicated — terms of the Open Skies treaty regarding "flight quotas" and scheduling: Every state-party is obligated to accept a certain number of overflights each year, referred to as its "passive quota," that is loosely determined by its geographic size. A state-party’s "active quota" is the number of flights it may conduct over other states-parties. Each state-party has a right to conduct an equal number of flights over any other state-party that overflies it. A state-party’s active quota cannot exceed its passive quota, and a single state-party cannot request more than half of another state-party’s passive quota. For the first three full years after entry into force, each state-party only has to permit flights totaling up to 75 percent of its passive quota. For example, Russia — which shares its quota with Belarus — and the US both have quotas permitting 42 flights per year. While Portugal is only obligated to allow two flights annually.
"This rigidity over scheduling and quotas really puts a signatory country of Open Skies at a disadvantage," says the defense authority. "Once a date has been set for a flight, a country isn’t allowed to re-schedule the flight — even if the weather that day happens to be bad. Regardless of whether the flight is flown or not, it still counts against your quota."
The State Department official is unconcerned about these worries, preferring instead to focus on the broader value of Open Skies, "The ideas that are embedded in Open Skies provide an excellent opportunity for countries to sort through their own government on whether or not they embrace the idea of transparency and openness," says the official. "When you get a foreign government to sign on to Open Skies, you’re talking about achieving consensus between the presidency, the military and legislative branch. "The fact that the USSR actually agreed to have overflights of American military aircraft is huge," the State Department official adds. "It supports the whole idea of democratic reform."
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