Scientific Implications of the Modified Observing Strategy of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

Near the end of 2013 the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (Fermi) mission plans to change to a modified observing strategy designed to favor the Galactic center while maintaining full sky-survey capabilities. This change would have important implications for the science of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT). In particular, this change will 1) substantially increase the Fermi-LAT sensitivity to young pulsars in the inner Galaxy, 2) provide simultaneous observations of the Galactic center with a suite of other instruments that have extended observing campaigns of the expected disruption of the G2 gas cloud complex (see https://wiki.mpe.mpg.de/gascloud/ProposalList) , 3) double the rate of improvement of statistical power for of searches for spectral lines from the Galactic center. In this contribution we discuss these topics. We also investigate ways in which the modified observing strategy can induce systematic biases, and discuss how those biases can be studied and mitigated with studies of control samples of LAT data.