1. We doesn't have to be another country/military. It could just be another research lab in US, China, or anywhere else in the world. Some people just like pushing tech to the limits, they seek the next hardest problem. The hardest problem post robust drone controls/motion planning era (e.g. drones like DJI) is to make them pure vision based.

2. Millions/Billions? Lol what are you even talking about. It takes about 100k to fund a graduate student for one year. I wouldn't be surprised if this entire research work was less than 1 million, maybe even 500k.