August 28, 2026: The war in Ukraine is expected to cost Russia a trillion dollars, nearly half its annual GDP. Russia has already spent $866 billion so far, and one of the major victims of that spending is ROSCOSMOS, the Russian space agency. Russian efforts to duplicate SpaceX’s Falcon 9 using the Amur-LNG rocket have been continually delayed. The first launch was supposed to take place this year but was recently delayed to 2031. Unless the Ukraine War ends by then, delays will continue. Delays and disappointments have been ROSCOSMOS's staple for decades. Ukrainian long-range drones recently attacked ROSCOSMOS facilities, and more of those attacks are on the way as crippling ROSCOSMOS has become another Ukrainian objective.

Meanwhile, the space race goes on. China has more than 500 satellites in orbit, compared with 200 for Russia and thousands for America. Russia has only 110 military satellites in orbit, some of them defective, while China has 157 and the United States 247.

Russian satellites are still a threat. Earlier this year, two new Russian satellites, Luch-1 and Luch-2, behaved suspiciously. It was eventually discovered that these satellites were intercepting information flowing through them to several European countries. This means that Russia now has access to many NATO secrets, including plans to aid Ukraine and disrupt Russian sabotage missions in Europe and intelligence efforts throughout the world. This is surprising because, since 2024, the Russian GLONASS satellite system has been in trouble. The problem is familiar: too many GLONASS satellites are ending their service lives, usually after seven years, and ROSCOSMOS does not have the money to replace them all. The cash shortage has stalled the program to build improved GLONASS satellites like GLONASS-K, the first unpressurized GLONASS satellite, which weighs much less at 750 kg and has a longer service life of ten years. The current GLONASS-M weighs 1,450 kg and has a seven-year service life.

Currently, most of the 20 or so GLONASS satellites in service are past their seven-year service lives and, as expected, operating erratically and starting to fail. Maintaining the worldwide GLONASS satellite network is not a high priority because Russian personal, commercial, and military satellite navigation users have long used satellite navigation equipment that contains GLONASS and American GPS receivers. This combination provides more accurate location information and a more reliable system because the two satellite systems contain about fifty satellites.

Keeping GLONASS active with a full constellation of 24 satellites using the latest technology is expensive and used to depend on a steady supply of high-tech components available only from the United States and its allies. Imports of those are blocked by Western sanctions for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Recently, China has also become a major supplier of electronics needed for navigation satellites, so Russia can buy from China the components it used to get from Western countries. Relying on China for components does not solve the fundamental problem that Russia lacks the money to maintain GLONASS. Since the American GPS system began operating in 1993, several other similar systems have appeared. GLONASS went online in 2011, and the Chinese Beidou came online in 2020, at the same time as the European Galileo system. Creating and maintaining these global systems is expensive, and only the United States and China have been able to finance continuous operation and upgrades. Galileo, funded by a coalition of nations, has struggled to get coalition members to provide the needed funds. Russia tried to compete but ran out of money.

Multiple global positioning satellite systems increase signal accuracy and reliability, and provide redundancy and interoperability in case of service disruption. Multiple systems can also create problems involving spectrum congestion, signal interference, and coordination complications.

By 2020, many believed current anti-jamming efforts would be insufficient to reduce the viability of American military GPS use. That proved optimistic because improvements in GPS jamming and spoofing technology emerged faster than expected. Since GPS disruption, it has become increasingly clear that Russia has regularly jammed or spoofed GPS signals, mainly to hide the exact location of equipment that allows GPS tracking. In the last five years, Russia has jammed or spoofed satellite navigation signals used by American GPS, Chinese Beidou, Europe’s Galileo, and Russian GLONASS in thousands of incidents involving foreigners. Most of this activity was not obvious jamming but harder-to-detect spoofing. Russia used this to conceal the true locations of key government officials and military units. Spoofing was particularly common against Russian military forces in Ukraine and Syria. Spoofing replaced the actual satellite signal with a false one, rendering smart bombs or planned attacks on targets inaccurate. Spoofing can introduce false signals gradually and sometimes delay a navigation system's realization that it is being deceived. That’s one function of the INS/inertial Navigation System: to monitor GPS and serve as a backup.

Current INS tech relies on receiving an accurate GPS location initially, and periodically thereafter, to keep both GPS and INS location data in sync. GPS depends on continuous satellite signals to operate, and INS steps in only when the satellite signal becomes temporarily too weak or absent. When the system gets an accurate GPS signal, the INS returns to standby mode. Spoofing can now mimic these momentary disruptions and evade INS detection as a false signal, since it is completely self-contained. This is sometimes a problem for American guided weapons sent to Ukraine that do not have the latest anti-jamming tech installed.

American INS researchers are not the only ones seeking an INS that is accurate and persistent enough to replace GPS for extended periods. INS has long suffered from its inability to provide location as accurately as satellite navigation systems, because the gyroscope and acceleration capabilities of chip-based INS cannot maintain the continuous precision of a space-based satellite system. This is no longer seen as an insurmountable problem, nor is the large cost difference between GPS and INS tech. Israel apparently feels it is closer to a solution than anyone else.

Meanwhile, spoofing satellite navigation systems has become more popular and practical because they do not require expensive or high-tech equipment. While American weapons and military navigation systems have a backup in the form of unjammable INS systems, these are useless if spoofing goes undetected. American systems are supposed to detect spoofing and revert to INS, but the U.S. does not disclose details of how these systems work, making it harder for spoofing systems to be modified to be less detectable. That is one reason the U.S. has not released detailed information on spoofing incidents: some may have evaded INS spoofing-detection tech.

To further complicate the issue, there have also been instances where mandatory AIS Automatic Identification System transponders that all large ships must carry are more frequently reporting instances of getting no GPS signal at all. Large ships usually carry two AIS units, in case one malfunctions, so AIS failure can be ruled out as a cause. Something outside the ship is manipulating the GPS signal. This shows that it is possible to deceive an unjammable INS, and new INS systems are being sought to eliminate that risk by replacing GPS most of the time.

The new INS technology has attracted a lot of attention in the military, where backups are always appreciated because, when equipment fails in combat or for commercial transport users like aircraft or ships, it’s literally a matter of life or death. Meanwhile, the U.S. is building and testing more compact GPS anti-jamming systems for smaller 200 kg UAVs. This is part of a program to equip all American UAVs, even the smallest ones, with more secure GPS. While the operator can fly all UAVs, GPS makes it much easier to track exactly where the UAV is at all times, and sometimes the UAV is programmed to patrol between a series of GPS coordinates. If the GPS jams or fails, the operator can usually use the video feed to find landmarks on the ground and bring the UAV back to a visible spot for landing. Other UAVs have a GPS failsafe system. When it is no longer available, the UAV turns around and heads back in the general direction of the operator. This is better than just allowing the GPS-less UAV to keep flying until it runs out of fuel and crashes somewhere,

GPS reliability threats come from a few suppliers, notably Russia, China, and North Korea. These nations have developed all manner of GPS jamming technology, and over the last decade it has become increasingly obvious that they have used new GPS spoofing technology to conceal the true location of senior personnel and mobile combat units.

Developers and users of GPS jamming gear tend to keep quiet about what they do because this sort of thing is illegal in peacetime, especially when civilians experience GPS disruptions themselves. When the United States tests military GPS jamming, it does so at sea or in remote areas and warns nearby civilians who might encounter GPS problems to watch for the tests and act accordingly. This warning policy has been in use for decades because more electronic equipment designs could cause problems for civilians if the disruptive effect extended farther than expected.

Other nations are less secretive about complaining, and Russia is often the culprit. In 2018 Finland and Norway went public with their accusations that Russia deliberately jammed GPS signals in northern Finland and Norway from a location near the Russian military bases in the Kola Peninsula on the Barents Sea. The jamming took place as NATO held its largest training exercise since the Cold War ended in 1991. Russia denied any responsibility, even though it is known to possess long-range jammers for GPS and other signals. Norway said it had tracked the jammer to a specific location but, when Russia refused to admit any involvement, Norway refused to explain how it tracked the signal because that would give Russia information on Norwegian EW (electronic Warfare) equipment that might be useful to it.

China is seeking to monetize its Beidou satellite navigation system. Beidou is the Chinese version of American GPS. Beidou finally became fully operational, providing worldwide coverage, in January 2020. Three competing systems exist: GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. The full Beidou network became a worldwide service in early 2020. The American GPS has been operational since 1978, while the Russian GLONASS achieved that status in 1995. Unfortunately, Russia had mostly financial problems keeping GLONASS operational. The European Galileo became operational worldwide in 2020. Each system cost about $10 billion to create and put into service. The American GPS cost $12 billion, mainly because it has been around for so long.

China is determined to do what none of the other three satnav systems have done: become profitable. China has not revealed how it expects to do that, and the other three major satnav providers remain silent on profitability. Currently, the main reason for building a satnav system is national prestige and an alternative to dependence on the Americans, or any single satnav provider.

China has also invested heavily in trying to obtain favorable press coverage for Beidou and somehow establish it as a preferred satnav service. That has cost over half a billion dollars but has not created any acceptance of Beidou as a superior satnav provider. China has a long-range plan for Beidou that includes adding new features and somehow achieving market dominance by 2040. China likes to announce long-range goals like this, then quietly forget about it when the promised future never arrives.

Meanwhile, Chinese state-controlled media have given a global audience unprecedented detail on this technological effort. People first got to experience Beidou in late 2012, when the first few satellites were made available to anyone with a Beidou receiver. China expected Beidou to become a major competitor to existing global navigation systems, at least for civilian users. China made it clear its initial goal was to grab a major share of the satnav market from the original U.S. GPS system by 2030. Progress has been slow so far.

In reality, China has struggled to make Beidou fully operational. By 2020, Beidou service was available worldwide, and the rest of the world was not impressed. Beidou incorporates the best features of the GLONASS and Galileo systems, as well as items planned for the next-generation American GPS satellites. Still, no one has found a way to make a profit, at least not directly. Plenty of ideas exist, but no one has turned any of them into cash yet. Moreover, the Beidou, Galileo, and GLONASS organizations dispute which frequencies each should use. Since GPS entered service first, no one contests the frequencies it uses, but the other three players face problems.

The success of the original GPS satnav system has generated all this competition, but so far these other efforts have found the work much more difficult than expected. A European consortium went forward with Galileo despite growing costs and technical problems. Initially Galileo was to be funded with private money. But costs climbed beyond the most optimistic estimates of future income, so Galileo is now funded with tax dollars, as were GPS and the competing Russian and Chinese systems.

Galileo came about because Europeans didn't want to depend on an American system and didn't believe the Russians could keep their GLONASS system viable. Galileo became operational because the European nations were willing to pay for a system that anyone could use without charge. Dual GPS and Galileo receivers cost about 20 percent more than GPS-only receivers. Two separate signal sets make receivers more reliable and accurate. Also, the way Galileo is being set up will provide improved reliability in higher latitudes and in built-up areas.

GLONASS was at full strength in 1996, shortly after the Cold War ended. But the end of the Cold War in 1991 ended regular GLONASS financing. Maintaining the system required launching replacement satellites every 5-7 years. By the end of 2002, only seven GLONASS satellites were still operational. However, the Russian economy recovered and funded a series of launches in 2003 that increased the number of active satellites to twelve. That rose to 18 by the end of 2007, and Russia had 24 GLONASS satellites in orbit by 2011, with the system fully operational again by 2012. As a result, GLONASS was the first real competitor for GPS. However, GLONASS was not completely functional until 2016 because of delays in building all the ground control stations.

The Russian government funds GLONASS because it does not want to depend on the American-controlled GPS system. But the money was only there because of high oil prices. Most GLONASS receivers in use are actually combined GPS/GLONASS receivers. Russia will have to spend billions of dollars on GLONASS over the next few years to keep the system fully operational, then spend even more to maintain the satellite network. The costs of the Ukraine war are consuming the investment capital needed to maintain Russia’s civilian infrastructure, including GLONASS, its railroad system and oil production. GLONASS is widely used alongside GPS. In other words, many systems, including cell phones that already use GPS, have added GLONASS and Galileo to provide better coverage and fewer instances where the GPS signal was unavailable.

Beidou is a more restricted system. Services available to anyone are less accurate than other systems, though Beidou also has a more accurate military messaging mode available only to the Chinese and Pakistani military. China continues trying to monetize its GPS service, which really would make it unique compared to the others, but few nations are willing to pay for a military-grade sat nav service provided by China. It will take more than a multi-billion-dollar propaganda effort to change global suspicion about Chinese motives and reliability in such matters.

One reason there are so many global positioning satellite systems is that they have both civilian and military applications. The US Department of Defense originally developed GPS to provide precise navigation and timing for its armed forces and allies. Civilians also use GPS widely for mapping, geocaching, tracking, and recreation. Similarly, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo have dual-use capabilities that can enhance the economic, scientific, and security interests of their respective countries or regions. For example, GLONASS can support Russian oil and gas exploration, Beidou can facilitate China's Belt and Road Initiative, and Galileo can improve European autonomy and resilience in the face of external threats or disruptions.

Using multiple global positioning satellite systems can also increase signal accuracy and reliability, as well as provide redundancy and interoperability in case of failures or attacks. However, too many systems can also create challenges, including spectrum congestion, signal interference, and coordination difficulties. Moreover, some countries may use their systems for strategic or political purposes, such as denying rivals access or asserting territorial claims. Therefore, establishing international norms and regulations for the peaceful and responsible use of global positioning satellite systems is important.