DARPA is a very interesting agency. It's got a $3.2 billion budget, but less than 250 employees and more than half are technical people. They're structured to maximize the amount of money that goes to the actual engineering teams and minimize internal inertia. The program managers get $20 million or so to throw around each year, and have tremendous authority over their projects and not a lot of oversight. They're on the younger side for people with that kind of budget authority and usually have PhD's themselves. They're limited to 4-5 year stints, so it's not a position that attracts people looking to make a career in bureaucracy.

ARPA itself was a direct response to the soviet's ability to allocate assets to state innovation like sputnik.

I'm sure Russia would at least have something like it.