MOSCOW, November 25. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin will be informed before the end of January where the signal adjustment stations of the foreign navigation satellite systems are situated in Russia, who owns them and who operates them.
“Even the question who is a real owner of the signal calibration stations of other navigation systems is not settled. We already receive the GPS signal. The question arises how the U.S. navigation system GPS operates in Russia, on the strength of which international decisions, who decided to bring this U.S. equipment in our country, where it is stationed, how many stations exist and who maintains their technical efficiency,” Rogozin told reporters.
In his words, representatives of the federal authorities, to whom he addressed, failed to give a reply to these questions. “I asked this question at a meeting of the government, but all officials are looking at each other and shrug their shoulders,” Rogozin said.
In this regard, he instructed to conduct an inventory of the infrastructure and unique capacities of the global navigation satellite system GLONASS before January 31 as well as the similar information about foreign navigation systems. “All this information should be submitted to us before January 31,” the deputy prime minister said.
He also stated that he had found the position of several U.S. experts that are concerned over possible use of the GLONASS ground stations as surveillance stations political biased. “Those who put forward this initiative, do not understand well the operation of the navigation systems. There are some stations, which calibrate the signal, the larger their number is, the more accurate the signal received from the satellites will be. How is it possible to trace down someone this way? These are not the intelligence satellites,” Rogozin said. “If to speak about the stations in the United States, I see only politics in this issue,” he added.
The Russian deputy prime minister noted that such people are technical unqualified and political charged. “But I hope that the official position of the U.S. Presidential Administration is different,” the deputy prime minister said. Meanwhile, Rogozin noted that the Russian orbital grouping GLONASS has the potential, which permits it to operate without the use of the signal adjustment ground stations. “We have an opportunity to strengthen the GLONASS signal quality already within next 12-18 months so that it will be more competitive than the GPS signal merely thanks to mathematical solutions,” the deputy prime minister noted.