"Worst System": RF missiles miss through satellite navigation Glodass - Bloomberg

Back in the 1980s, the USSR launched 24 satellites for the system of positioning, navigation and synchronization called Glodass to compete with American GPS controlled pentagon. This grouping was useful for Russia during the war with Ukraine, when the United States was deprived of the occupiers of access to its satellite navigation of military level. At the same time, GLONASS is less accurate than GPS and very obsolete, although the Russians regularly updated their satellites.

Senior Lecturer at the School of Civil and Environmental Construction of the University of New South Wales in Sydney Craig Roberts compared Glodass with American GPS, European Galileo, Chinese Beidou, and found that the Russian system is greatly inferior to competitors. As it turned out, it has the lowest quality of land control stations and space clock, which reduces the accuracy of measurements. "Everyone knows that Glodas is the worst system.

If I measure the location, using all four groups to process the same data, then Glodass will be at the bottom," the scientist says. According to John Gardy, the Deputy Director of the Program on Russia of the Democrati Protection Foundation, a non -party research institute in Washington, Glodass error is about 10 meters. This is a fairly big difference that can lead to a miss and a goal.

Even if Russia is able to improve its navigation system in the future, now its inaccuracy significantly reduces its combat capability. According to Bruce McClinetov, a senior researcher in Rand Corp and the head of the Space Enterprise Initiative initiative, Glodass signals are less reliable and accurate for weapons, so the military leadership of Russia has gone in a different way. In this way, they try to compensate for the error of hitting with high power.

"One of the reasons why Russians need to create such a large bomb is their inability to get accurate ammunition," the expert explained. Russia also uses less protected GPS signals to attack civilian objects in Ukraine. According to Pavel Luzin, a senior researcher of the Jamestown Foundation, all Russian weapons use chips that combine Glodass and GPS signals. "This is enough to attack large fixed purposes, such as dwellings, hospitals, power plants, shopping malls and ports," he added.

Russia continues to modernize its own satellite navigation, and in August with the help of a rocket launched a satellite "Glonas-K2". According to Russian media, the device should last 10 years and provide precision less than 30 cm. This is the first time to update the satellite network, and in total the program is planned to spend about $ 5 billion.

Pavel Luzin noted that most of the satellites of the Russian group are already outdated, And in many others, the shelf life also comes to an end, so they will need 20 new spacecraft for the full operation of the system by the end of the decade. Only Russians can produce and send no more than two satellites a year, because they lack electronics because of sanctions. "Their biggest problem is how to save the system itself," the researcher said.

While Russia is trying to eliminate the disadvantages of GLONAS, Ukraine is already using more reliable GPS technology due to US access codes. It allows you to use custom weapons, such as HIMARS missile installations, and strike sensitive strokes on the facilities of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the occupied territory. Earlier it was written that Russia adapts missiles P-500, P-700 and P-1000 to attack land purposes.