GLONASS:

The Russian Federation controls and operates a constellation of satellites and related ground stations called GLONASS, for purposes similar to GPS. GLONASS was developed and launched originally by the Soviet Union and has been in operation for several years now, similar to GPS. But since break up of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has not maintained GLONASS in a fully operational mode. The reasons are not technical in nature but are due to scarcity of money for maintenance of a fully operational constellation of GLONASS satellites. Similar to GPS, a certain minimum number of GLONASS satellites are required to achieve the fully operational status of providing view of at least four satellites everywhere on earth and at all times. Remember from discussions in the previous tutorial sections that the ‘sacred’ minimum number of satellites for fully operational status of GPS is twenty-four. So is there for GLONASS. Currently, however, the GLONASS satellite constellation consists of only twelve operational satellites. The Russian Federation has made announcements that it intends to upgrade GLONASS to fully operational status in the near future.

GALILEO:

The availability and accuracy of GPS is controlled by the US Government. Now if you consider the fact that GPS applications are permeating into many aspects of civilian lifestyle all over the world. Use of GPS in automobiles is ubiquitous today - pretty soon GPS use for applications such as life saving emergency co-ordination and other critical applications for the civilian community (during times of war and peace) can be expected to become ubiquitous. Thus, one might have a tendency to derive a conclusion that the US Government has a means of controlling the life style of civilians all over the world to a certain extent.