Oleksandr Zinchenko, director general of the National Space Agency of Ukraine, announced recently that it was decided to set up a joint Ukrainian-Russian venture to update the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). It will be based in the Kharkiv Research Institute of Radio Technical Measurements and Moscow’s Russian Research Institute of Space Instrument-Making. In addition, it is planned to sign an interstate agreement on a common time-and-navigation space of Russia and Ukraine, based on GLONASS and other navigation systems.
After the deterioration of Ukrainian-Russian relations, any news about cooperation between the two countries can arouse nothing but pleasure. All the more so when it is about cooperation in a hi-tech field. Such navigation systems are based on special satellites that circle the Earth in a circular orbit and send radio signals of a certain frequency to the antennas of users’ navigational devices. The satellites’ coordinates being known, the distance from them to the receiver is determined by the time which the radio signal takes to cover it. By processing the information received from three satellites, the navigational device determines its location in a three-dimensional space. Thanks to this, the receiver’s owner can find their whereabouts at any time. Moreover, depending on the receiver’s type and the software installed, the user of a space navigation system can monitor their movement on the electronic map of the locality where they are. They can even plot the course on these maps, with due account of traffic signs and gridlocks, and look for certain buildings, filling stations, etc. It is an alternative and complementary to the United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS), the Chinese Compass navigation system, and the planned Galileo positioning system of the European Union.
The history of GLONASS began in the Soviet era. The first satellite was put into orbit in 1982. Then the system fell into disrepair due to inadequate funding by Russia. Satellites would go out of order, while finding any precise coordinates is out of the question without them. Now Moscow has begun to revive this system. There are 24 navigation satellites orbiting the Earth in 2009, with a few more to be launched. Among the GLONASS problems are lack of a sufficient number of electronic maps and reliable and inexpensive receiving devices and correction of satellite orbits, which has a direct bearing on the finding of their coordinates and the precision of measurements.
In 2008 the Russians tried to make a deal with the European Space Agency on updating GLONASS as a joint navigation system. But the Europeans turned down the offer, as they were making a similar system on their own. Conversely, Ukraine accepted the offer and is going to help. But is it likely that we will regret this later?
Any space navigation system can be used to wage a long-distance war by means of high-precision weapons. For example, a navigation system of this type is required to guide bombs, missiles and shells – not to mention the fact that it can help almost immediately spot the location and monitor the movement of your own military unit. Or it can allow you to “geo-tag” your artillery battery, which will enable it to maintain high accuracy of fire – GLONASS belongs to Russia’s ministry of defense, after all.
The Russians evinced great interest in this system after the Georgia war – and for good reason. Equipped with US devices, the Georgian troops surpassed the Russians as far as target reconnaissance and hit accuracy are concerned. Meanwhile, there were instances of “friendly fire” on the Russian side due to unclear positioning and poor control. Incidentally, some Russian officers used in this war US-made civilian radio receivers which they had bought for their own money.
Ukraine seems to be going to help Russia again to catch up with Americans. While almost every US infantryman in Iraq now has a navigation device of this kind, every Russian soldier is bound to use something similar very soon. Incidentally, Ukrainian equipment can increase measurement accuracy in the GLONASS navigation system from about ten meters to a few centimeters! Or, maybe, our Khartron factory will help Russians improve their Bulava ballistic missile, which cannot so far be adopted due to defects in its guidance system? Or shall we recall that “Genghis Khan is worse with a telegraph than without it”?
