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Military Research Foundation to Receive $100M in 2014

Russia's prospective rival of the U.S. breakthrough military research agency DARPA will receive 3.3 billion rubles ($100 million) of state funding this year, its spokesman said Monday.

However, this year's budget for Russia's Advanced Research Foundation was actually decreased 12.5 percent year-on-year, the spokesman said.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, founded in 1958, has an estimated annual budget of $2.8 billion.

The Russian agency needed more money in 2013 because it was 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 the 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 U.S. agency had a hand in developing what would later become the Internet and the Global Positioning System, or GPS. Its current list of projects includes military robots, electromagnetic railguns and flying armored cars.

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