China's rival GPS system to increase accuracy

The South China Morning Post reports China is to massively increase the accuracy of its home-produced satellite navigation system and one of its uses will be improved intelligence gathering in the South China Sea, according to a government official. Tests of the upgraded system will be carried out at the end of the year. A simple form of the Beidou system is installed on many Chinese-made smartphones. A more complex and accurate version of the system is already used by China’s government for intelligence gathering. The current accuracy of the system was about 10 metres for mobile phones, but this would be massively improved for all systems and would benefit civilians users and the government and military.