MOSCOW, January 20 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s prospective rival of the US breakthrough military research agency DARPA will receive 3.3 billion rubles ($100 million) of state funding this year, its spokesman said Monday.
But this year’s budget for Russia’s Advanced Research Foundation was actually decreased 12.5 percent year-on-year, the spokesman said.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), founded in 1958, has an estimated annual budget of $2.8 billion.
The Russian agency needed more money in 2013 because it was only setting up its operations, the spokesman said.
“The funds are quite enough,” he said.
The Advanced Research Foundation, established in fall 2012, is the brainchild of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who gave up a career as a firebrand nationalist politician to supervise Russia’s space and defense industry.
The foundation has a staff of 30 and is currently supporting 12 projects, selecting them from 1,100 proposals.
The first to become operational is a “social network of experts” aimed at early prevention of emergencies, the agency has reported.
No details about the project are available, but it was reported to be set to go into test mode in May.
The US agency had a hand in development of what became the Internet and the Global Positioning System (GPS). Its current list of projects includes military robots, electromagnetic railguns and flying armored cars.
