UARC contract avoids key questions ...

[Dharma_Bum]

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UARC contract avoids key questions ...

by Beverly Keever / 10-12-2005

Last Friday, the long-awaited draft contract between the University of Hawai‘i and the U.S. Navy detailing the contentious proposal to establish a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) on the Mänoa campus was finally released. Under the terms of the deal, much of Mänoa’s work will focus on exploratory and advanced research, advice, testing and evaluation of weapons systems. Consisting of 86 single-spaced pages but missing five attachments, including one on security classification specifications, the contract produces two major surprises—far less money guaranteed for UH and far more ironclad secrecy than had previously been intimated by Mänoa administrators.

If okayed—the contract is subject to approval by the UH Board of Regents and by the Naval Sea Systems Command—UH’s Navy UARC would be the fifth in the nation and the first in 58 years. Unlike the Navy’s four huge research centers elsewhere, however, which operate as distinct institutions, Mänoa’s UARC would be interspersed with the existing campus research infrastructure—buildings and personnel financed largely by Hawai‘i taxpayers.

The biggest surprise is that the contract fails to specify how much the Navy will pay. UH officials have said that the UARC would bring in a maximum of $50 million during the five-year contract, but the draft makes no mention of that figure. Also, instead of the five–year guaranteed deal previously touted by UH, the contract now calls for a three-year award with a two-year option—after evaluating its need for the UARC, the Navy will have until April 5, 2008, to extend the contract for an additional two years. Further clouding the picture, changes already underway in U.S. military strategy could divert the Navy into different kinds of research, thus eviscerating the fledging UARC....Read More...

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