US To Restrict Russian Military Flights Over American Territory

 

The Treaty on Open Skies allows states to conduct unarmed aerial surveillance flights over each other’s territory Wikimedia Commons

 

US To Restrict Russian Military Flights Over American Territory

ZeroHedge.com

As relations between the US and Russia continue to strain, US officials are preparing restrictions for Russian military flights over American territory, permitted by the Treaty on Open Skies, a 2002 agreement involving 34 countries that allows signatories to conduct aerial surveillance of military installations and other sensitive sites, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Tensions over the treaty intensified over two days in early August when, as we reported, a Russian jet flew over several US cities including Washington DC and Bedminster NJ, while President Donald Trump was staying at the Trump National Golf Club in the town.

The Open Skies Treaty has been in effect since 2002, and has enabled more than 1,200 flights meant to help verify that signatories are in compliance with arms control agreements, according to the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Notably, under the freedom permitted by Open Skies, the Russian plane was authorized to enter P-56, the highly secure airspace surrounding the White House.

But now, predictably, US military officials suspect that Russia is trying to hide something from the prying eyes of spy planes flying overhead: Recently, the Kremlin imposed restrictions on flights over Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic Sea exclave, which US officials believe is host to a cache of sophisticated weapons, according to the WSJ.

While the treaty allows for a per-flight range of 5,500 kilometers (3,418 miles), Russia has enforced a “sub-limit” of 500 kilometers for flights over Kaliningrad. Since it requires roughly 1,200 kilometers to cover the entirety of Kaliningrad during an Open Skies flight, according to Pentagon officials. This restriction compels treaty members to reallocate two flights that would otherwise be used to observe other portions of Russia.

The restrictions have prompted US officials to question what the Russian military in Kaliningrad may be doing between Open Skies flights, and so they’re trying to incentivize their Russian partners to return to compliance.

“We want to induce Russia to come back into compliance with the treaty,” said a senior State Department official, adding measures the U.S. takes that are reversible could prod Moscow.

Among options that U.S. officials have considered are limitations of Russian flights over Alaska and Hawaii, according to officials with knowledge of the matter. The treaty’s US delegation is scheduled to announce reciprocal countermeasures Tuesday during a meeting of the Open Skies consultative commission in Vienna, according to officials at the State Department and Pentagon. Russian officials responded by claiming that several parties to Open Skies, including Canada, Georgia, Turkey and the US, have placed some limits on what can be accessed by the spy planes of signatories.

Russia claims that the US required a Russian flight to raise its altitude floor over the Alexander Archipelago in Alaska during an Open Skies flight in July. “The US is resourceful in reducing access to its airspace,” retired Maj. Gen. Alexander Peresypkin said.

“We have serious claims that a number of participating states are interfering with observation flights,” a member of Russia’s Vienna delegation, told The Wall Street Journal. “Our partners, in an attempt to ‘balance’ mutual claims, often just come up with small problems, elevated to the rank of big ones.”

However, under Open Skies, Russia has also restricted flights along its borders with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two disputed territories that declared independence following the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. Russia has also raised the altitude floor for flights over Moscow, and in the past it has restricted flights over Chechnya and cited force majeure, canceling flights due to the presence of high-ranking officials in the areas of pre-approved flight plans.

As WSJ explains, the Treaty on Open Skies was ultimately ratified in 1992, before going into effect in 2002. Initially conceived during the Eisenhower Administration, it is among several treaties to which Russia and the US are party that have been fraying in recent years.

Russia unilaterally left the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe in 2015 after declaring a temporary hiatus in 2007. There’s also the Vienna Document, a military-inspection agreement among members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which Russia has increasingly challenged.

“Open Skies is part of a gradual breakdown in relations,” said the senior State Department official. “Russia wants to renegotiate the European security relationship. We’re seeing European security agreements erode.”

One US lawyer quoted by WSJ said Russia was creating “nuisance restrictions”…

“They’re imposing nuisance restrictions that diminish the usefulness of the treaty to the U.S.,” said Stephen Rademaker, a lawyer at Covington & Burling who previously served as assistant secretary of state in charge of the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. “Russia will comply to the extent they feel they have to or want to. That’s a bad trend for security in Europe, for our allies in particular.”

…To try and stop the US from viewing “sophisticated” weapons and defense systems that have been built up in Kaliningrad.

“There have been reports about all kinds of sophisticated radar systems—air defense, area denial capabilities—designed to keep NATO warships and airships away,” said Michael Carpenter, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense with responsibility for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. “If they have that sort of weaponry, we would like to have more transparency about what is there.”

Of course, as we noted last month, it is unclear what if anything spy planes can glean from the flights that the Russians (and the US) couldn’t already learn from spy satellites overhead, especially since anything of value would have been hidden well in advance of the pre-telegraphed flight.

To be sure, Pentagon officials cite the value of the treaty, chiefly the fact that imagery captured on the flights is shared among treaty states and also with the public, imposing a level of transparency that is rare in the murky world of counterintelligence operations. Tellingly, in March 2014, the US used Open Skies imagery to counter Russia’s claim that it wasn’t engaged in a military buildup along the Ukrainian border.

“If we didn’t have it, what would be there?” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe, told The Wall Street Journal. “I’d rather have it. Anything that allows for transparency is worthwhile. But you got to enforce it.”

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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-26/us-seeks-curb-russian-military-flights-over-american-soil