Yesterday it was announced that Russia and China have finished negotiations and have agreed to let the other build stations in their countries to expand Russia’s GLONASS and China’s BeiDou satellite system. The agreement will help expand both networks and increase flight navigation security and overall precision. According to an article posted on Voice of Russia, this cooperation will also allow for system integration between GLONASS, BeiDou and GPS.
“We have agreed to cooperate on several pilot projects. The first one involves putting a local monitoring and correction station … [at] one Chinese airport. This navigation, landing and signal monitoring system will provide satellite navigation for flights using the zonal-navigation method, working on two constellations, GLONASS and BeiDou,” said Yevgeny Belyanko, GLONASS’ Vice President, according to an article posted on Russia Beyond the Headlines.
This seems especially relevant as Russia continues its campaign to expand the GLONASS system to rival that of the U.S. GPS system. In June, several news sites reported the US and Russia seem to be having some issues with talks to construct similar GLONASS stations on US soil. In fact, negotiations have deteroriated so much that in June, Russia stopped the operation of US GPS stations and disabled them for military use. If an agreement is not reached by September 1, they will not be reinstated.
