0920015

A Key Programme is proposed for high-cadence monitoring of the inner spiral arms of the Galaxy with INTEGRAL paired with ToO observations of new transients with XMM-Newton (as well as with other telescopes). While these regions are already exposed thanks to the Galactic Plane Scans (GPS) many transients are being missed because of month-long gaps between scans of any particular region. Our proposed program (25.6 ks per revolution when visible for a total of 1.5 Ms during AO9) will complement the successful Galactic Bulge (GB) program by extending the monitored region of the Galaxy to the Inner Perseus/Norma Arm tangents on one side of the GB and the Scutum/Sagittarius Arms on the other. These fields are ripe with obscured high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients (SFXTs) as well as other hard X-ray emitting sources (e.g. microquasars low-mass X-ray binaries bursters and magnetars) that INTEGRAL is well-suited to finding thanks to its large field of view and angular resolution at high energies. Source light curves in 2 energy bands for ISGRI and JEM-X will be provided to the community permitting rapid dissemination of results which will enable prompt follow-up of interesting events. This program will have an immediate and lasting impact on studies of transient and variable hard X-ray populations. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]