Message posted by Eagle Scout on August 31, 2012 at 8:42:38 PST:

It was explained to us that the treaty allows flights anywhere. They just have to be requested, scheduled, and announced according to a procedure.

Open Skies missions are/were (I'm not directly involved nowadays, but I assume all this is still valid) defined as 'active' or 'passive'. Active missions are ones where the US is doing the overflying, and passive missions are where US territory is being overflown. I think the main point of your question is answered by this fact alone: passive missions are handled just as seriously as active ones, if not more so.

Government and industry facilities working in certain sensitive fields are part of a notification program which takes into account the date, time, & flight path of the announced overflight as well as the capabilities of sensors allowed under the treaty--allowed resolution, field of view, spectrum, etc.

Whenever we might be affected, we'd get phone updates of the initial notice of intent to do an overflight, then the scheduling of that flight, flight details etc; when the flight was happening, these updates would be minute-by-minute.

This was the notification regime in place for facilities like ours that, you know, actually existed. You might infer from this that nonexistent places have even more support in 'responding proactively' to treaty obligations.

In Reply to: OPEN SKIES posted by wheresjanet on August 30, 2012 at 22:54:23 PST:

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