Entering the digital era of the Open Skies Treaty

The Open Skies Treaty has been a peace-building instrument between North American and European nations for over two decades. This agreement is based on the possibility for each country-signatory of the Treaty to independently conduct observation flights and obtain aerial imagery data of the territories of other Treaty States-Parties. This imagery data was originally acquired only using traditional photographic film cameras. Together with the rapid development and advancement of digital sensor technologies, the logical step forward was to amend the Treaty provisions to allow for the use of these types of sensors during observation missions. This paper describes this transition process and highlights a number of technical problems which needed to be addressed by experts working within the Open Skies Consultative Commission workgroups.