Open Skies and Monitoring A Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty

The Treaty on Open Skies (Open Skies) is intended among other things to provide, in the words of its preamble, means \"to facilitate the monitoring of compliance with existing or future arms control agreements.\" Open Skies permits overflights of the territory of member states by aircraft equipped with an array of sensors of various types. Their types and capabilities are treatylimited. To find useful application in monitoring a cut-off treaty Open Skies would need to be amended. The number of signatories would need to be expanded so as to provide greater geographical coverage, and restrictions on sensor-array capabilities would need to be relaxed. To facilitate the detection of impending violations of a cut-off convention by Open Skies overflights, the data base provided by parties to the former should include among other things an enumeration of existing and former fuel cycle and research facilities including those converted to other uses, their precise geographic location, and a site plan.