Open Skies Treaty overflight of the United States by the RuAF Sept 25-29 2017

From September 25th to 29th the USAF played host to an Open Skies Treaty overflight of the United States by the Russian Federation.  Here is the flight plan as captured by FlightRadar24, as best as it was able to track the flight using Mode-S MLAT, triangulating transponder information received by private receivers across the country. You'll notice the green dots are likely sites which pictures were being taken, as they were within the allowable envelope. Provided they were at ~11,000ft, and not banking, they would be allowed take pictures, per the treaty and arranged flight plan.

Flying at 11,000ft indicates the digital electro-optical sensor (that when spoken of before the Senate Armed Services Committee was made to sound like the Death Star by DIA 3-Star General Stewart) was in "medium" altitude mode, and the swath was 7.7km (4.8mi) total width.  Please remember that USAF members are aboard the plane for the entire overflight, the camera being used has been certified by a 22 nation committee, and the resolution of the imagery is worse than commercially available satellite imagery.

As usual, the USAF did not inform the American people of this overflight because their media posture is "passive", by policy. Only the Russian news media, usually maligned as "fake news" or propagandists, inform us of these flights. Why would the US Government be more controlling with the message than the Russians? Wouldn't they want to show a working treaty in action and dispel any fear about the Red Scare narrative? 🤔

(There is another Open Skies overflight going on this week, FYI)

Open Skies Treaty overflight OS-12-018; Russia over Canada in 2012

Russian Open Skies Tu-154M-Lk-1
Ottawa International Airport on 2013-10-27
Photo Credit: Colin Elliott

I'm working backwards through the flight plans and mission reports of Russian overflights of Canada under the Open Skies Treaty, and I am noticing some similarities and trends.  Since they only have ~5000-6000km according to the treaty to use in one mission, they can't visit every since military facility; but they make a really good effort.  The Russians have a few favourite locations they like to visit as often as possible; CFAD Dundurn and CFB Suffield are two of those locations.  Former Pinetree Line Long Range Radar Stations are favourites; after all, why would we decommission them and not build something in the same spot?  Any and all military bases are obvious targets of areal photography as well; Cold Lake, Kingston, Borden (w/ CFAD Angus), etc...

Open Skies Treaty overflight OS-13-020; Russia over Canada in 2013

Russian Open Skies Tu-154M-Lk-1
Ottawa International Airport on 2013-10-27
Photo Credit: Colin Elliott

As a follow-on to my previous post and the one before that on Open Skies Treaty overflights of Canada, here are the 2013 coordinates where cameras were engaged and disengaged, and flight paths.  This mission was performed between 2013-06-15 and 2013-06-20.

Click the square bracketed icon at the top right of the map to blow it up full-screen so you can read it better.

Open Skies Treaty overflight OS-14-032; Russia over Canada in 2014

Russian Open Skies Tu-154M-Lk-1
Ottawa International Airport on 2013-10-27
Photo Credit: Colin Elliott

As I mentioned previously, I requested, via Access to Information, from DND, all the flight plans performed under the Open Skies Treaty which were flown over Canada by the Russians until 2014 - and somehow got them!  So now I'm looking to find out what the Russians thought would be so important hat they would spend ~$150,000 to fly over here, shack up in some of our finest rural hotels, and buzz around Canada taking pictures of our great country.  Of course everyone would love to spend a week flying over Canada and getting away from it all, but their choice of things to photograph is sometimes a little odd.  The Diefenbunker?  Really?

I'm looking for you to identify some of the less obvious legs of the trip.  along the flight plan you'll see "START" and "STOP"; this is where the photos started to be taken, and stopped being taken.  If they weren't shooting photos at the time, they were travelling to the next leg where more photos would be taken; pretty simple.  It is plain to see they took photos of former Pinetree Line Radar sites (such as Alsask) and the former CFB Carp; but some of the other areas are a mystery to me.

Do you see anything interesting?

(Click the Maximize square at the top right corner of the map to go full screen)