The system will give the Chinese military an alternative to GPS, which was developed by the Pentagon and is still controlled by the U.S. government

China has begun operating a homegrown satellite navigation service, Beidou, on Tuesday, joining the United States and Russia, the official China Daily reported.

Beidou, or Big Dipper, the domestic version of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), started providing navigation, positioning, and timing on a pilot basis to China and the neighboring area for free on Tuesday, the newspaper said, quoting Ran Chenqi, director of the China Satellite Navigation Office.

The system, with 10 orbiting satellites, covers an area from Australia in the south to Russia in the north. Signals can reach the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east, Ran said.

China has so far launched 10 satellites for the Beidou system, including one this month, and planned to put six more in orbit in 2012 to enhance the system’s accuracy and expand its service to cover most of the Asia Pacific region, according to Ran.

The system will give the Chinese military an alternative to GPS, which was developed by the Pentagon and is still controlled by the U.S. government, the Wall Street Journal said.

Beidou could be used in conjunction with other satellites, drones and related technology to help track U.S. ships, position its own submarines and other vessels, and guild antiship ballistic missiles towards their targets, the newspaper said quoting military experts.

The system will be “helpful” to national defense, Ran was quoted by the China Daily said. The official paper also said that “there have been long concerns that the U.S. might take its dominant GPS offline in certain international emergencies,” to support its argument that an independent satellite navigation system is “important to economic development and national security,” using the word of an expert.