OREANDA-NEWS. As part of a working visit to Tula Region, Vladimir Putin visited the KBP Instrument Design Bureau, where he chaired a meeting on the work of the Advanced Research Foundation.

The President looked over the workshops at one of the Design Bureau’s enterprises, saw models of the products and spoke with employees. The questions they raised included mortgages for homes and construction of pre-schools in the region.

KBP Instrument Design Bureau is one of the Russian defence industry’s leading research and design organisations, which specialises in developing modern high-precision weapons systems.

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Opening remarks at a meeting on the Advanced Research Foundation’s activities

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon colleagues.

Today, we will discuss the Advanced Research Foundation’s ongoing development.

I remind you that the Foundation was established just over a year ago. Its main purposes include analysing potential security challenges and threats to our national interests, searching for bold and substantial ideas that are a step ahead of the times, and supporting promising defence sector research and development that would enable us to make real breakthroughs and produce unique new military, special or dual-purpose technology.

In essence, the Foundation should be the technology elevator for defence innovations, help to get them into use as rapidly as possible and ensure production of the needed equipment, and take on financial risks related to scientific research that does not always have easily predictable results at the outset. 

I think that setting up the Foundation was a completely justified and logical step. Our Armed Forces must have the very latest technology, equipment and weapons systems that meet the needs of military conflict in the future and reliably protect our country’s security in a fast-changing world that is becoming no less uncertain and free of risks.

We have made substantial efforts over these last years to modernise the Russian Armed Forces. The forces are receiving an ever increasing amount of new equipment now. This work must continue, and it needs to do so at a qualitatively new level too. In this respect we count on the Foundation’s effective work to bring about positive results.

The Foundation has already examined more than 1,000 science and technology projects and proposals and has chosen 77 promising projects from among them. Practical implementation has already begun of 12 top priority projects. We will discuss this in more detail today.

What I want to say right now is, first, that selected projects should avoid direct duplication of even very promising foreign developments. It is usually not effective to invest money in repeating the road that others have already travelled. We need our own original ideas and proposals. At the same time of course, we must keep those ideas realistic: there is no place here for science and technology illusions or empty fantasies with no basis to them. We must not waste money on projects that cannot be practically implemented or for which there is no demand. Of course, in this kind of work something inevitably ends up being lost, this is obvious.