Posting from Russia – Russia  has threatened to turn off GPS stations in Russia June 1 and permanently on September 1 if the United States does not allow them to set up GLONASS control stations in the United States.

According to Mr Rogozin who heads Russia’s defense industry this will occur if no solution is found with Washington. Fascinatingly the Russian deputy prime minister took to Twitter to promise Russian’s that the quality of GPS would not be affected by the dispute.

What is of course truly interesting in this dispute is the United States does not operate any GPS function within the Russian border. The closest GPS control stations are in Western Europe and South Korea. One can only surmise that they are referring to GPS Differential Correction stations which are operated privately, not by the US government. This will of course only hurt the Russian consumer and business user of the system which would seems to be entirely counterproductive.

A resolution to this seems to be in the works with Russian plans to position GLONASS control stations in Cuba. Ultimately this will be helpful to the North American GPS user as most phones (iPhones, etc) and high end GPS systems from Trimble and others connect to and use both GPS and GLONASS signals.