Russia's space agency wants the government to pump $14 billion into developing its rival to GPS and Galileo.

The funds will be used to support the orbital group of the system and for development of navigation maps and user add-ons for the application, as well as for making the system more competitive in general.

Russia's global navigation satellite system has been given increasing state support for development for nearly a decade. Development of the system began back in 1976, but suffered from a lack of support in the 1990s.

In December 2010, a Proton-M launcher failed to send three Glonass-M navigation satellites into orbit, causing them to crash into the Pacific Ocean. The failure to successfully launch three communication satellites turned out to be quite costly, with direct losses estimated at $80 million.

According to investigators, the launch failure was caused by an error in mission instructions, which resulted in too much fuel being loaded onto the rockets.

In May 2011, the navigation satellite was successfully launched. Russia now controls 23 operational satellites in Earth’s orbit, which provide 100 percent coverage of the country’s territory.

By the end of 2011, the launch of nearly two dozen more satellites is expected, with the aim of ensuring continuous global coverage.