MOSCOW, March 5 (UPI) -- To be honest, anyone familiar with Russian roads would hesitate before seriously talking about the commercial success of the Global Navigation Satellite System.

National security is an entirely different story because the Russian armed forces require their own navigation systems that would not depend on Global Positioning System providers. However, airlines all over the world, including Russia's, rely heavily on the Global Positioning System Navstar system, and it would be impossible to change this situation.

Although GPS receivers have become extremely popular with the world's motorists, Russia has only 360,000 miles of paved roads, while the minimal nationwide requirement is 720,000 miles. European Russia has eight times less roads than Poland and seven times less than Latvia.

The situation east of the Urals mountains range is even more deplorable. Arctic regions and other areas with the same status account for 60 percent of Russian territory and for just 15 percent of the country's roads.

It appears that the ambitious GLONASS network will have very few users in Russia. The Federal Space Agency used to advertise the Kliper spacecraft as a replacement for the obsolete Soyuz taxis until August 2006, when the new system, developed by the Rocket and Space Corporation Energia headed by Nikolai Sevastyanov, was rejected completely.