Russia selects 40 projects for defence research fund

A year after President Vladimir Putin signed a bill setting up an agency, comparable to America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Russian defense ministry has begun awarding its first prizes for Future Research Fund.

“The defense minister has approved the structure of the system,” Ria Novosti quoted Maj. Gen. Yevgeny Cherdakov, head of the ministry’s information and analysis center as saying on Wednesday.

“It will comprise the central staff unit, regional centers in Vladivostok, Novosibirsk and other cities, the key R&D robotics center, as well as units in armed forces branches and arms,” he added.

robotics said the system would aim to ensure Russia’s supremacy over other countries in military technology, adding the new structure was already in operation.

Rights to all intellectual property and scientific developments produced by the fund will remain state property.

Defense Ministry spokesman Anton Tyurin said 40 projects had been selected from 800 submitted, adding it had been open to all comers. Competition winners will receive $1,600-2,230.

He noted such developments as a portable remote device for detecting people in woods and earth shelters, as well as a portable, autonomous system for high-precision orientation of objects in space.

“The key task is to bring the obtained scientific and technological proposals to the level required by the Defense Ministry,” Tyurin said. “This work has been started, and we hope to bring the competition participants’ ideas into the state defense orders.”