16 



fied and Specified Commands based upon their responsibilities and 

 the missions they are given. . 



Priority for our production is determined by those Commands 

 and the Joint Staff in terms of the immediacy of the mission and 

 the risk of failure if they don't have those kinds of products. 



We have a history of cooperation with NOAA and with its Na- 

 tional Ocean Service. Whereas NOS produces the charts of the U.S. 

 waters, we produce the charts of the foreign waters to support all 

 of this country's activities. 



NOS sells us, for our DOD customers, NOS charts of U.S. waters, 

 at the marginal cost of production and distribution. We do contrib- 

 ute annually over $13 million to the maintenance of NOS's chart 

 data base, and we purchase charts from them. Last year we pur- 

 chased about $970,000 worth of nautical charts from NOS for use 

 by DOD customers. 



We have incorporated the NOS and the DMA chart corrections 

 into our weekly Notice to Mariners. We use the NOS agency siles 

 network to distribute our public sale products to the civil mariner. 

 We are in charge of two of the 16 navigational warning areas in 

 the world for the radio broadcast of hazards to navigation. 



We usually rely on the Navy to survey for us in foreign waters. 

 If they are unable to do it for whatever reason, we have turned to 

 NOS and have contracted them to do surveys as DOD did in the 

 Nicaraguan Rise back in the middle 1980's. 



If a survey requirement is in U.S. waters to support Navy, we 

 will ask that NOS do it. If they can do it on their own resources, 

 fine; if not, we have transferred money to them to do surveys. We 

 do think that they ought to have access to something like the 

 Harbor Maintenence Trust Fund in order to have more resources 

 to do that kind of activity in response to DOD needs. 



We are now discussing with NOS two projects. One is the estab- 

 lishment of a real-time system for tidal current forecasting in spe- 

 cific ports for the Navy home-porting needs and the other is de- 

 tailed surveys of safe areas for coastal training where the Navy is 

 preparing to take on its new role in littoral warfare. 



I would like to talk about two things that we do in cooperation 

 with NOS. One is the Digital Nautical Chart Production Program. 

 The Digital Nautical Chart Production Program is a move by the 

 Navy to go to a paperless navigation system on board ships. And 

 we, with assistance from the NOS, are converting about 4,000 

 coastal and port and harbor charts from paper to digits in a vector 

 product format. 



NOS, with some additional funding from us, shared funding, has 

 taken on their area of responsibility; and they are turning those 

 into digital products for us. Those 4,000 charts will be done by the 

 end of 1997. The cost has been about $8 million DMA has invested, 

 and that is shared between the two of us. This allows NOS to go to 

 a digital nautical chart for the U.S. maritime industry. 



The other thing is the Defense Hydrographic Initiative, which is 

 a cooperation between DMA, NOS, and Navy to improve the man- 

 agement of our hydrographic and bathymetric holdings and pre- 

 pare for more accurate chart production in the future. We are ex- 

 pecting some results from that in 1997, and they will be shared 

 across the three elements. 



