For all those years, while our country was trying to move from post-socialist perestroika to pre-capitalist modernization, such a concept as military science was rarely mentioned. Why is it military … With science in general, speaking openly, for a long time we had a real trouble, which resulted in the fact that today the Russian science-intensive industry does not yet have a full-scale opportunity to compete with the science-intensive business of a number of foreign countries.
However, sooner or later, the black stripe should turn into a white stripe, and some rudiments of this transition can already be observed today. Speaking about the development of military science, which today is a special emphasis on the part of the state, one cannot fail to mention the bill concerning the creation of the Advanced Research Fund.
At one time, Dmitry Rogozin spoke about the creation of the FPI, and his idea found a response among the top leaders of the state. Some time after Rogozin's proposal to create a Foundation for Advanced Research in the Military-Technical Industry, the idea began to acquire certain contours. Last month, Vladimir Putin introduced a relevant bill to Parliament, and a week ago this bill successfully passed the first reading in the State Duma. The overwhelming majority of the deputies (425) supported the idea of the FPI.
The only (or not quite the only - more on this below) that somewhat alarmed the deputies and members of the public during the discussion of plans to create a FPI, is that this project is called by many an analogue of the American DARPA - the American agency for promising research projects. The names are, indeed, very, very similar, but it is completely incomprehensible what could be reprehensible in this. In this case, the adage that it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel is more than appropriate.
If DARPA has been operating in the United States for more than half a century, and, admittedly, it operates effectively, then why not take such a structure as the basis for long-term planning of military-technical strategies for the Russian Federation. And besides everything else, the question that rests on the terms is not the most important one. After all, DARPA is far from the only example of such an agency (fund). In the 50s and in the Soviet Union, the Scientific and Technical Council was approved under the Military-Industrial Commission, which worked within the framework of the USSR Council of Ministers. If one of the readers takes too close to heart the issues of our primacy or lag behind the West, then such readers need to be reassured by saying that the version of the domestic scientific and technical council appeared even a little earlier than the very American DARPA (or, more precisely, ARPA in the original version).
Both the Soviet version and the American version, as many think, were not aimed solely at solving strategic military tasks, although these were the tasks that were solved in the first place. Thousands of civilian specialists worked around the domestic Council and the American agency, who tried to use military-technical developments and, let's say, for national purposes. A striking example of the use of military strategy from the same ARPA became ARPAnet, which is today considered the father or, if you will, the grandfather of the modern Internet. Thanks to the activities of our Council of military-technical orientation, methods of astronomical, Arctic and Antarctic research have been developed, various advanced materials have been created that are widely used today in the civilian industry, new medicines have been created that can have a positive effect on the human body in the presence of certain diseases.
It turns out that the idea submitted by Dmitry Rogozin is, rather, the idea of reviving what was already in our country, but, unfortunately, during the timelessness it turned out to be almost lost. Despite the fact that it is difficult to name a new idea, it does not lose its relevance.
The creation of the Foundation for Advanced Research in Russia is a direct step not only towards the development of the military-industrial sphere, but also towards its integration with innovative platforms of the civilian sector. This is a direct opportunity for the mutual effective use of scientific developments, which can also bring tangible benefits to the state treasury. After all, as you know, one job in a knowledge-intensive sector, no matter what orientation (military or civil) it may have, automatically generates at least 7-8 more jobs in related industries. It turns out that the creation of an FPI is also a direct path to solving the strategic task of increasing the number of jobs in Russia. The money that will be invested in the Fund for Prospective Development, if, of course, they are skillfully disposed of, will become ideal investments in the future of the country, no matter how pompous it may sound.
It is worth recalling what the FPI will do if the issue of its creation is finally resolved. It is planned that the tasks of the Foundation will include:
It would seem that the presence of such a Fund is definitely the right thing and necessary in our country. However, at the time of the vote, it turned out that there were also those deputies who spoke out against the idea of creating an FPI. After the vote, it was especially interesting to find out why some representatives of the deputy corps saw something negative in the creation of the Fund.
It turned out that those who voted “against” do not see anything wrong with the possible work of this Fund, but, as they say, they are tormented by vague doubts that the next Fund will turn into a new corruption trap. So thinks, for example, the deputy from the Communist Party faction in the State Duma Vladimir Fedotkin. And his opinion cannot be called completely irrelevant.
In fairness, it must be said that in recent years, indeed, a lot of funds have been created that were supposed to work to solve large problems, but instead they perfectly accumulated funds, which then went to incomprehensible accounts and dissolved in endless financial spaces, and often and in the vastness of foreign financial systems. And therefore, the fears of the same deputy Fedotkin cannot be ignored, especially since the price of the issue with the FPI, according to some data, is about $ 12.5 billion per year (the program is calculated until 2020).
That is why it is worth talking about the timeliness of the idea of creating a Fund for Advanced Research in Russia, but at the same time, it is necessary to ensure broad public control over the spending of funds from this fund so that it does not become another ghostly "Rusnano", which seems to be, but whose products on the market, it seems, and not …
