Swiss army to massively expand research with universities

The Swiss army plans to massively expand its research budget by 2030 and work more closely with universities to bring the army up to speed technologically. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox Drone research, cyber security, surveillance technology –universities are already conducting research in areas such as these for the army. The funding body is the Federal Office for Defence Procurement (Armasuisse). It plans to increase its research budget to 2% of the army's budget by 2030. This is stated in the federal government's current armament strategy. Armasuisse has now specified what this could mean for Swiss universities: in future, it wants to invest around ten times as much money in university research projects as it does today. This could mean an increase from the current CHF9 million ($11.41 million) to CHF90 million per year. The focus is on the Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Zurich and EPFL in Lausanne). Today, ETH acts as a kind of technology ...