After three months of uncertainty following a contentious breakup with its long-time US Department of Defense sponsor, the independent science advisory group JASON was on the verge in mid-April of signing a contract with a new DOD sponsor. The contract, which would allow JASON to continue its activities with only minor interruptions, was being negotiated with the DOD office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), which plans and oversees the entire DOD science and technology program.
“We are very close to the end of productive discussions with DDR&E, and I hope we are going to get a contract in place within a couple of weeks,” said physicist Steven Koonin as Physics Today went to press. Koonin, the chair of JASON and provost at Caltech, said the new contract would be for somewhat less than the $1.5 million agreement JASON had with its previous sponsor, the Defense Advanced...
