Our #OpenSkies visualization at openskies.flights clearly shows why the Treaty is essential for all 34 participating states, but especially for Europe. It needs to be preserved. A thread. /8
1/8 Open Skies is all about confidence-building. Its unique feature consists in the fact that during overflights, representatives of both the observing state and the observed state sit together in one aircraft.
2/8 Open Skies provides important intelligence about military changes too. It has also been used for verification of other arms control treaties. Most states lack other 'national technical means' (reconnaissance satellites) to do so.
3/8 There is no room for cheating. The treaty describes the procedures for overflights and their technical features down to the smallest detail. All decisions are subject to consensus within the Open Skies Consultative Commission.
4/8 The treaty sets a fixed passive quota for each member state. This is the maximum number of flights each state has to allow over its own territory. The number of flights a state can conduct is its active quota. Russia and the US have max. 42 flights.
5/8 We visualize 2060 active and passive quota flights (2002-2019).This number equals 1517 actual flights, because almost 1/3 of these flights are shared by several states. Every year some planned overflights are cancelled.
6/8 States make different choices about which treaty members to overfly. The US, Canada and European states within NATO conduct almost all of their flights over Russia/Belarus, plus some non-aligned states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine.
7/8 NATO members have agreed not to conduct flights over each other. Russia distributes its flight quota more equally across all NATO member states. Joint Russian-Belarussian flights go primarily over Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
8/8 European states conduct most overflights. Even if the US left the treaty, Europe could still derive benefits from overflying Russia. Russia would retain the right to conduct overflights over Europe and Canada, which account for 87% of its flights.
