The future of the Russian armed forces lies in developing high-precision 'smart' weapons and boosting the capacity to conduct no-contact warfare, a Russian deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry said on Saturday.

"Old-fashioned army and fleet, organized in accordance with 20th century examples, will lose a war before they are face to face with the enemy. The era of high-precision long-range weapons has arrived. The future lies in smart weapons," Dmitry Rogozin told students in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk.

The deputy prime minister, who oversees Russia's defense and space industry, said Russia would invest 20 trillion rubles ($561 billion) in the coming years in modernizing its army and fleet.

In addition, 3 trillion rubles ($84 billion) will be invested in modernizing production at Russian defense plants.

The Russian armed forces are expected to become one of the world's best by 2020, Rogozin said.

++ Russia plans to get a foothold in the Moon - Dmitriy Rogozin

Russia plans to organize a permanent base on the moon rather than leave it after several successful missions, the Russian deputy defense minister in charge of defense and space industries said. "The moon is not an intermediate point in the [space] race, it is a separate, even a self-contained goal. It would hardly be rational to make some ten or twenty flights to the moon, and then wind it all up and fly to the Mars or some asteroids.

This process has the beginning, but has no end: we are going to come to the moon forever," Dmitry Rogozin said in an article to be published by the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Friday. A mission to the Moon has become one of Russia's top space priorities.

Russian Space Agency Roscosmos said earlier this week it had launched a project to design a spacecraft suitable for moon missions and a super-heavy carrier rocket to deliver it there.

Russia plans to launch three lunar spacecraft - two to surface and one to orbit - by the end of the decade.

Source: Voice of Russia