U.S. loses GPS dominance

Reuters reported that Russia has successfully launched a rocket on Tuesday carrying the last three satellites to complete a navigation system to rival America's GPS.

The military-run GLONASS mapping system works over most of Russia and is expected to cover the globe by the end of 2009, once all its 24 navigational satellites are operating.

In addition, the European Union and European Space Agency are building their Galileo positioning system. This 3.4 billion euro project of 30 satellites is scheduled to be operational by 2013. Galileo will provide more precise measurements than GPS or GLONASS. China, Israel, Ukraine, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea have also joined on this project.

India is also taking part in the project and will establish a regional augmentation system based on the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).

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Both GLONASS and Galileo represent independent moves by those countries to wean themselves off the US GPS system.

It is probably true that the U.S. Department of Defense still maintains a Selective Deniability (SD) ability within the network which may still be used to effectively jam civilian GPS units in a war zone or global alert while still allowing full functionality for military units.

Of course we know the implications of Russia having their own satellite system.