Russians To Fly A Photo Mission Under Open Skies Treaty

The Russians are coming, and they're going to be flying right overhead! The little-heard-of Open Skies Treaty is bringing a Tupolev Tu-154M reconnaissance airplane to the USA. The Russian machine will land at Travis Air Force Base in California and then go wherever the Russian and Belarussian crew wants to take it, for up to 96 hours. American observers will accompany the Russians on their travels, as provided in the treaty.

The flight will take place this coming week, beginning when the Russian jet makes a touchdown at Travis AFB, and continuing for a planned 2,641 miles (4,250 km). There is already a follow-up flight planned for next month.

The Russian intelligence officers aboard this flight will even have privileges denied to American pilots -- they can go freely into any hazardous airspace, including warning, restricted, prohibited, military operations and alert areas. But there's no need to be alarmed -- US pilots on similar Open Skies missions have similar privileges over Russia. As indicated above, the observed nation has the right to send its own observers or liaison personnel along with the observing nation's aircraft.

Apart from Travis AFB, the Russian recon plane is restricted by the treaty to a short list of other airfields for refueling or other activity during its five-day visit: McConnell AFB (KS), Ellsworth AFB (SD), Wright-Patterson AFB (OH), Robins AFB (GA), and Dulles International Airport (VA).

The Open Skies aircraft will often fly as low as 3,000 feet, which allows its sensors to capture objects with a resolution of 30 cm. While the Russian mission commander has great latitude in accomplishing his mission, many of the most minute details of the operation are governed by the terms of the treaty.

Under the terms of the treaty, the US, Russians, and other signatory nations have the mutual right to fly over each other's territory. The concept was first suggested by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955, but went nowhere in those mistrustful days. Eisenhower was going to get his pictures one way or the other, and he then approved the covert U-2 overflights which ended in the shootdown of Francis Gary Powers and Soviet Premier Khrushchev's dramatic exposure of the U-2 program in the UN.

The idea of an open skies treaty never died, and in 1992, thanks to a more open Russian government than ever before, an agreement was finally hashed out in Helsinki. It was 2002 before the treaty actually took effect. The US has conducted at least 19 overflights of the Russian Federation and Belarus; the Russian side only three of the USA. The flight this week will be followed by another next month. In theory, at least, each side could fly twenty Open Skies missions a year. In practice, there are far fewer of the costly flights.

The Russian airplane that will be conducting this mission is a unique machine. The standard Tu-154 and stretched Tu-154M are "three-holer" airliners resembling the venerable Boeing 727 in concept. These planes were the workhorses of Aeroflot, and the airlines of the former Soviet states and of many Eastern European nations. Around 900 of the jetliners were built, but only one, registration RA-85655, has been modified for Open Skies missions.

Originally built as one of two planes to be a sort of Air Force One of the USSR, the one-off Tu-154M-ON ("ON" stands for "Otkrytoye Nebo" -- "Open Skies"), is stuffed with the equipment permitted by the treaty, initially including optical and radar sensors. The optical cameras are limited to 30cm ground resolution, which means that they can distinguish between objects that are about a foot long. The camera suite includes one vertically mounted framing camera, two obliquely mounted framing cameras, one panoramic camera, and one video camera.

A sideways-looking synthetic aperture radar (SAR) with about 3m ground resolution is also fitted. In the future -- starting in 2006 -- the planes conforming to the treaty will also be able to deploy an infrared (IR) line-scanner with 50cm ground resolution.

The US will receive duplicates of all the Soviet photographs; this, too, is a treaty provision.

The USA also has a single special-purpose aircraft built for Open Skies.  The OC-135B aircraft is a modified WC-135B, itself a modification of the venerable (1955 vintage) KC-135 tanker, kissin' cousin to the Boeing 707. The OC-135B can carry up to 38 personnel including crew, sensor operators, and international observers. A large Open Skies logo decorates the tail.

FMI: www.state.gov/t/ac/rls/fs/2004/33147.htm