Treaty on Open Skies
The Treaty on Open Skies 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.
[5] The 32 state parties to the Open Skies Treaty are Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark (including Greenland), Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
Applications from other interested countries are subject to a consensus decision by the Open Skies Consultative Commission (OSCC).
[2] Eight countries have joined into the treaty since it entered into force in 2002: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Sweden.
[8] It comprises representatives from each state party to the treaty and meets monthly at the Vienna headquarters of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
All Open Skies aircraft and sensors must pass specific certification and pre-flight inspection procedures to ensure that they are compliant with treaty standards.
[citation needed] Canada uses a C-130 Hercules aircraft equipped with a "SAMSON" sensor pod to conduct flights over other treaty nations.
The pod is a converted CC-130 fuel tank modified to carry the permitted sensors, along with associated on-board mission systems.
A consortium of nations consisting of Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain own and operate this system.
Since the overall annual passive quota for the United States is 42, this means that it was obligated to accept no more than 31 observation flights a year during this three-year period.
[15][17] 34 years later, the Open Skies concept was reintroduced by U.S. President George H. W. Bush as a means to build confidence and security between all North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact countries.
In February 1990, an international Open Skies conference involving all NATO and Warsaw Pact countries was held in Ottawa, Canada.
[17] On 24 March 1992,[1] the Open Skies Treaty was signed in Helsinki by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and foreign ministers from 23 other countries.
Until entry into force in January 2002, DTRA support for the treaty involved participating in training and joint trial flights (JTFs).
[27] In October 2019, documents from the U.S. House of Representatives indicated that President Donald Trump was considering withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty.
[30] On 21 May 2020, President Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the treaty due to alleged Russian violations.
[39] The Biden administration informed Moscow in May 2021 that it would not re-enter the pact; on 7 June 2021 Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that formalized Russia's exit from the Treaty on Open Skies.
