MOSCOW, April 22. /TASS/. The Russian space agency Roscosmos will send technical proposals to Russia’s Transport Ministry and aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia on replacing GPS systems with Glonass user equipment that will be able to receive signals from the Chinese navigation system, Roscosmos Chief Dmitry Rogozin said on Friday.
"Today we will send the Transport Ministry and Rosaviatsia our technical proposals on replacing GPS with Glonass user equipment that will also be able to receive the navigation signal from the Chinese Beidou orbital navigation system with whose administration we have been successfully interacting for eight years," the Roscosmos chief wrote on his Telegram channel.
Roscosmos earlier cautioned that GPS could be switched off while Russian airlines kept taking on lease and purchasing foreign airliners, ignoring the requirement of installing Glonass equipment, Rogozin said.
"Now they will hastily have to look for a solution. This solution is the only one: to set up Glonass stations at all airports for providing the high-precision navigation signal and install Glonass receivers on all airliners operational in our country," the Roscosmos chief stressed.
The Russian daily Izvestia earlier reported, citing a letter by Rosaviatsia Deputy Head Dmitry Yadrov to State Air Traffic Management Corporation CEO Igor Moiseyenko and the heads of the agency’s inter-regional branches that the aviation watchdog recommended airlines to prepare for flights without using the US global navigational satellite system (GPS). It cited the possibility of the GPS signal being disconnected or jammed and spoofing attacks during flights over the Kaliningrad Region, the Black Sea, near Finland and in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The Roscosmos chief cautioned in March that the United States was considering disconnecting Russia from the GPS system. He stressed that there should be no worry about that because Russia operated the Glonass domestic satellite navigation system.