US Congress consents to designate India’s NAVIC as allied system

News:Recently,the US Congress has agreed to designate India’s Navigation in Indian Constellation(NavIC) as its allied navigational satellite system. 

Facts:

About Allied navigational satellite system: 

• The allied navigational satellite tag allows the US satellite navigation system to co-operate or to exchange data with these satellite navigation systems.
• This tag is designated as part of the conference report of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2020.
• The designation of India’s NavIC as an allied system is part of the American effort to develop a prototype program for multi-global navigation satellite system.
• Along with NavIc,Galileo of the European Union and QZSS of Japan were also designated allied navigational satellite system tag.
• Further,the US Congress has also designated Russia’s GLONASS and Chinese Beidou as a non-allied system.

Additional information:

About NDAA:

• The National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA) is the name for each of a series of United States federal laws specifying the annual budget and expenditures of the U.S. Department of Defense.
• The National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA),2020 had designated India as a major defence partner which brings India at par with closest US partners in terms of defence trade and technology transfer.
• The designation had smoothen the passage of sales to India of high–end US military hardware to India.
• The US has already given India Strategic Trade Authorization-1(STA Tier-1) status, a move that facilitates the exchange of high technology and strengthens defence collaboration.

About NavIc:

• NavIC also known as Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is an independent regional navigation satellite system being developed by Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
• The main objective of IRNSS is to provide reliable position, navigation and timing services over India and its neighbourhood.
• It provides accurate position information service to users in India as well as the region extending up to 1500 km from its boundary which is its primary service area.
• It will provide two types of services namely, Standard Positioning Service (SPS) which is provided to all the users and Restricted Service(RS), which is an encrypted service provided only to the authorised users.