Germany-U.S. Training Flight of the Open Skies Treaty

Nordholz Naval Air Station, Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony

Federal Republic of Germany

March 10-13, 2003

During spring break at Lake Forest College, where I am an assistant professor of politics, I attended a Germany-U.S. joint training flight of the Open Skies Treaty. The joint trial flight took place over a four-day period, March 10-13, 2003, at the Nordholz Naval Air Station, which is located a few miles southeast of the North Sea city of Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, Germany. Col. Ernst Britting of the Zentrum fuer Verifikationsaufgaben der Bundeswehr hosted the event.

The purpose of the trial flight was to give German and American military officers and technical experts the opportunity to prepare for this year's official treaty flights. The event also enabled delegations from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland to learn more about the treaty and prepare for their own flights. The event included a diverse group of some fifty military personnel, technicians, policy officials, and other observers from nearly a dozen countries.

The Open Skies Treaty came into force on January 1, 2002. It allows many states in North America and Europe to conduct unrestricted aerial observation flights over each other's territory for confidence-building and other purposes. The number of flights a country must accept (i.e., the passive quota) and can conduct (i.e., the active quota) is generally a function of its geographical size-the larger the country, the greater the quotas. Currently, the treaty allows states to use any of the following sensors to collect information: standard framing, panoramic black-and-white film camera with 30-centimeters resolution; video camera using magnetic tape, also with 30-meters resolution; and synthetic aperture radar with 3 meters resolution.

The idea of mutual aerial reconnaissance goes back to the late-1940's. In 1955, the U.S. formally proposed such a regime, but subsequent talks failed to produce an agreement because growing tensions on both sides of the East-West divide (primarily between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.) were too great to foster security cooperation. The U.S. revived "open skies" in 1989, however, and by 1992 some two-dozen states had agreed to a framework treaty. Within three years, nearly all of the treaty's original signatories had submitted their articles of ratification. By the end of 2001, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus-the last three holdouts-ratified the treaty and submitted their articles of ratification. Since then, states outside the Cold War alliance system of NATO and the now-defunct Warsaw Pact have joined the treaty, including Bosnia-Herzegovena, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden.

I participated in three flights. Each flight day began with a morning briefing at Nordholz by a German officer, which included a review of the weather forecast and a summary of scheduled events and activities.

The first flight occurred on Monday, March 10, 2003. It consisted of several dozen passes by a Transall C-160 transport plane over the main runway at Nordholz at altitudes starting at 6,000 feet and ending at 1,200 feet. The purpose of this exercise was to test the operational capabilities of two sensors-black and white photography and infrared radar imaging. To test the infrared sensors, a German team of scientists laid sheets of heated plastic beside the runway. The infrared sensors are designed to identify slight variations in ground temperature and are useful tracking the movements of tanks and other vehicles that emit heat radiation. (Currently, the use of infrared sensors is not permitted. State parties to the treaty will be allowed to use this type of sensor in several year's time, however.) The sensors were placed on a platform in the cargo bay of the Transall aircraft. Once airborne, the sensor platform was extended out the back of the Transall cargo bay for data collection. The film from both sensors was later developed and available for viewing. The Transall is quite spacious, allowing those on board to easily move about the cargo and seating area and have access to the cockpit.

The second flight followed on Wednesday, March 12, 2003. This trial flight was the "dress-rehearsal" for an actual observation flight as spelled out in the treaty. The day proved to be less than ideal for data collection, however, because the morning weather briefing called for lots of clouds and rain for the entirety of Northwest Germany. After the briefing, the American delegation prepared its proposed flight plan. It then presented a plan to the German delegation. Once an agreement between them had been reached on the precise course, distance, and duration of the flight, the two teams and the observer delegations boarded a Breguet Atlantic BR 1150 aircraft. On this plane, which also serves as a search-and-rescue and submarine tracking craft, the two same sensors used on the earlier flight were mounted beneath a wing in a sensor pod. The flight plan covered much of northwestern Germany, heading southwest toward the Netherlands, southeast to Bremen, southwest again along the Rhine, west to Frankfurt and beyond, then north along the former inter-German border to the Hamburg area and back to Nordholz. The film was later taken in a sealed canister and developed at a special laboratory site in a building on the naval air station. Because of the inclement weather, the sensors recorded very little useful data. (It is worth noting that the German Government is committed to expertise in arms control verification. In addition to the regular film processing lab at Nordholz, the Bundeswehr also maintains a mobile film processing lab, which was deployed to the Balkans in the 1990's.)

The final flight came on Thursday, March 13, 2003. What a difference a day makes! This day proved to be unseasonably warm and sunny for Northern Germany this time of the year. In a cloudless sky, members of the American and German teams, along with a handful of observers, boarded the Transall (the same plane that was used on the first flight) and flew a short figure-eight flight over northwestern Germany, from the vicinity of Nordholz in the west and Bremen in the south to Kiel and Hamburg in the east and the German-Danish border in the north.

The four-day event concluded with a banquet on Thursday evening hosted by the Germans at a hotel on the North Sea just outside Cuxhaven. I spent Friday in the city of Bremen, one hour's drive south of Cuxhaven, where I sampled local delicacies for lunch and toured the old city.

I extend special thanks to Col. Britting for giving me the opportunity to observe the flights and the Office of the Dean of Faculty at Lake Forest College for its generous financial support for travel and accommodations. Thanks also to the German team for organizing the event and for the warm welcome I received from members of the various national delegations.