Where Are We? - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 172

fewer satellites, users would more often notice a difference, particularly when
trees or buildings block one or two satellites. Many high-end gps receivers
have dual-frequency capability, like the bridge sensors mentioned earlier, to
take advantage of any additional Russian glonass satellites in view. The
brownout issue illustrates how users benefit from other satellite navigation
systems now joining gps in orbit. However, other gps- like systems— often ref-
erenced generically as gnss, for any global navigation satellite system—spark
competition and occasional conflict.
Everybody Wants One
As mentioned in the preceding chapter, glonass began in 1982 under the
Soviet regime and attained twenty-four operational satellites in 1995. It declined
precipitously in the latter half of the 1990s because each satellite had only a
three-year design life. 192 glonass uses a different type of radio signal but oth-
erwise is very similar to gps. Some have asserted that the Bank of Credit and
Commerce International (bcci), which collapsed in 1991 amid a scandal involv-
ing financial fraud, money laundering, illicit technology transfers, arms sales,
and drug trafficking, sold Soviet spies secret navstar gps plans. 193 A source
in the investigation showed Time magazine reporters various photographs he
claimed to have made of navstar technical documents in the Kremlin, but it
is unclear when or how the Soviets acquired them. 194 While the U.S. military's
signal encryption codes are top secret, some aspects of gps have been public
and published for commercial users from the start. Russian Federation presi-
dent Boris Yeltsin opened glonass for civilian use in 1999, but the Moscow
Times described the fleet as being “in a dismal state”—nine satellites in orbit
and only six working—when the Russian Cabinet in August 2001 approved
spending 23.6 billion rubles (roughly $800 million at the time) to rejuvenate
the constellation over ten years. 195 The second-generation satellite, designated
glonass m, added another civilian frequency, improved the antennas, and
more than doubled the life span, to seven years. 196 Russia in 2007 announced
glonass k, a smaller, lighter version with a third civilian signal and twelve-
year design life, offering the option to launch as many as six on a single rocket. 197
In December 2011 the glonass constellation again reached twenty-four oper-
ational satellites, and at a March 2012 navigation conference in Munich, Ger-
many, a Russian Space Agency official confirmed his nation's desire to expand
the constellation to thirty. 198 The Russian government has approved 347 bil-
lion rubles (nearly $12 billion) through 2020 for new satellites, a ground-based