President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed the law on establishing the Foundation for Perspective Studies (FPS), analogue of US DARPA, on October 16th 2012, Lenta.ru reports.

The law was approved by the Federation Council on October 10th and also approved by State Duma in the third reading on September 28th.

The major task of the FPS (established as a non-profit organization) is promotion of high-risk scientific research in the area of defense, which may help reach a totally new level of the country’s military-technical, technological, social and economic potential. All the intellectual property rights, including research results, will be owned by Russia.

FPS will replace the Military-Industrial Commission of Russia headed by vice-premier, Dmitry Rogozin. FPS will report to the Ministry of Defense and the government of Russia. The fund will have the following supervisory authorities: board of guardians, managing board and Director General. Rogozin is the initiator of FPS, however it is still unknown if he would head the fund.

The fund’s staff will include about 100 employees and it will be implementing about 150 projects.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (USA) was founded in 1958 in response to USSR launching the first artificial Earth satellite. DARPA participated in many global projects, for example: Internet, UNIX operating system (the basis of Linux, MAC OS and some other operating systems) and TCP/IP protocol. At present DARPA is sponsoring the development of different robots on behalf of Pentagon and other projects.