Translated material
Civilian connection
For the first time, the Russian Ministry of Defense decided to involve civilian scientists and students in the development of weapons
The Ministry of Defense has opened another facet of the ongoing reform of the armed forces - for the first time in its history, it has established five annually allocated grants of 2 million rubles each. with a period of up to two years “to conduct military-technical scientific research, as well as stimulate innovative activities to solve pressing problems in the field of ensuring the defense capability of the state.” They say that the idea belongs to Minister Anatoly Serdyukov personally.Previously, to solve scientific and technical problems within the framework of research on state defense orders, the military department attracted mainly design and research organizations of the military-industrial complex and law enforcement agencies. But the scientific potential of civilian universities, including those of global importance, was clearly underutilized. The practice of holding various scientific and technical competitions both in our country and abroad has shown that at very moderate costs you can get new ideas, the implementation of which will solve many problems. Our military decided to use this experience, which is widespread in the world.
The grant mechanism was chosen as the most effective and less expensive way. “The lack of such tools at the Russian Ministry of Defense restrained the initiative of creative youth capable of finding non-standard and effective solutions, including in improving existing weapons systems and creating new ones,” said yesterday the chairman of the military-technical committee of the directorate of the chief of armaments of the Russian Armed Forces, candidate of technical Sciences Major General Anatoly Krailyuk, responsible for the competition. Among the potential applicants for grants, the committee sees the capital's MSTU named after. Bauman, MEPhI, MIPT, MSU, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, polytechnic universities throughout the country. In this case, we are not talking about military scientists and cadets of military universities.
Back on July 21, 2008, the Minister of Defense issued order No. 347 “On the establishment of grants from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for conducting military-technical scientific research.” A grant council was formed, headed by the Chief of the General Staff, Army General Nikolai Makarov. This appointment can be explained by the previous position of General Makarov - chief of weapons. As of today, organizational documents have been approved. The next step was the formation of a list of areas of military-technical scientific research. It was approved less than a month ago. Then a competition was announced. Applications are now being accepted and will last until the end of January.
The list of studies that the Ministry of Defense plans to encourage with grants is also known. Among the items on the list, in particular, are ways to counter threats to military security using asymmetric methods. An approximate research topic is also given: new forms and methods of armed struggle, means of overcoming air defense and missile defense, combating high-precision weapons, non-contact military operations. The next direction is the creation of new types of weapons based on promising technologies. It involves working on unconventional weapons, using nanotechnology, microminiaturization, robotization, and unconventional energy sources.
Contestants are also invited to work on means of information warfare. This section refers to “global monitoring of general and special-purpose networks.” It is clear that this is information gathering, that is, reconnaissance. “Counterparties” are also listed here, who are invited to work on methods and means of protecting military information resources.” The same paragraph mentions network-centric control systems.
The paragraph on improving the quality of military-technical systems speaks, in particular, about technology and materials to improve the combat properties of systems and objects. Finally, as part of the development of means of supporting and training the armed forces, we are talking, in particular, about the protection of personnel during combat operations, as well as about increasing the anti-sabotage and anti-terrorist protection of military facilities.
“The sample problem is not a direct research topic, but a hint for the competitors,” General Krailyuk clarifies. In his opinion, for the next 30 years, the key areas of army modernization will be the development of information support, information countermeasures and reconnaissance. For each area of the list, commissions have been formed, consisting of experts - as a rule, representatives of military science and the defense industry. Their advice will serve as the basis for the council's grant decisions. Amount 2 million rubles. taken from practice. Indeed, within the framework of different grants, different tasks are solved. Most often, grants are issued to implement a specific formulated idea.
For example, the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency this year accepted applications for grants to develop an amphibious aircraft, that is, an aircraft that would also perform the functions of a submarine. The Pentagon has set specific requirements for weight and size characteristics and for solving target problems. Work on such a grant is much more expensive, since it requires a well-founded solution to the proposed idea with a feasibility study. “We don’t ask the contestants to design a new Nautilus - we ask them to formulate an idea,” says General Krailyuk (the name “Nautilus” was the name of the submarine that the American inventor Robert Fulton offered to Napoleon as a secret weapon against England, later Jules Verne in his famous novel he gave this name to the submarine of Captain Nemo).
The Russian competition is only taking the first step. The military recognizes that it is now important for them to understand whether they are able to speak the same language as civilian scientists in formulating ideas. The right to intellectual property, despite the money issued under the grant, remains with the author of the idea. There is only one limitation - when officially publishing research materials, the author must make a link: the work was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Ministry of Defense. “An idea is not patented, a specific technical solution is patented,” said the head of the military-technical committee.
Answering Vremya Novostey’s question about how to deal with secrecy and whether an open list of research areas would serve as a pointer to foreign intelligence officers about our urgent needs, General Krailyuk reassured us: official expert bodies considered the list unclassified. However, if in the course of research it is necessary to impose restrictions or classifications on materials constituting state and military secrets, they will be imposed.
An electronic mailbox has been created on the Ministry of Defense website in case applicants for grants or contestants have questions. Applications can also be sent to the same address, duplicating them later in documents. Subject to positive experience, the list of areas of research for the army ordered by civilian scientists will be expanded.