OCEANOGRAPHY 33 



Might I show this gi-aph to Mr. Oliver, sir, to show the magnitude 

 of the problem? 



Mr. Miller. I want to say, if the gentleman will yield further, 

 that no one is charging the Navy or charging you with this. We 

 understand the pressure that is on you and pressure that is on the 

 Na^y, and other things, for money, and we would like to be the ful- 

 crum of the lever that would sort of get you out of this hole, if 

 possible. 



Mr. V^AKELI^^. As I said, Mr. Chairman, again, and I hope that 

 Admiral Hayward may speak to this because we face this problem 

 of ship construction jointh^ in terms of priorities, the Navy has a 

 problem in the next 10 years to supply that number of oceanographic 

 ships sufficient to give us the NASCO recommended capability in 

 competition with ships of the line. 



Mr. ]MiLLER. You see, Mr. Secretary, in the full Committee on Mer- 

 chant Marine and Fisheries, this is the thing that confronts us. Our 

 merchant fleet is becoming obsolescent and we are in exactly this 

 same position here. "We would like to build and certainly you would 

 liave no objection to building that atomic icebreaker up there 

 [pointing]. 



Mr. Wakelix. None at all. 



Mr. iSIiLLER. This is one of the things where the question is. Are 

 we going to get an atomic icebreaker or probably put some of that 

 money into another nuclear submarine? We also realize that we 

 have to get some other things so that what we have to do is unify 

 ourselves and perliaps we can make the fight to see if we can get some 

 more loose money ends up for the whole program. 



Mr. Olr-er. May I continue, Mr. Chairman ? 



Mr. Miller. Yes. 



Mr. Oliver. Mr. Secretary, I appreciate rerx much your forthright 

 statements and observations. However, it seems to me that your testi- 

 moiw this morning, at least, indicates that we are not moving ahead 

 on the basis that I believe at least that we should be moving on. I 

 do not mean a crash program but I am saying that I think there 

 should be more stress and this thing should be dramatized more than 

 is being done. The Inter- Agency Committee, of which you speak 

 and which you support, is to me a constructive move. There is no 

 question about that from what we had, which was not zero exactly 

 Imt it was not too much. 



I am wondering, and I have said this on several occasions before, if 

 we do not need another mechanism that will place the proper stress 

 on oceanography as a major function in this Government of ours, par- 

 ticularly in the face of what I read the Soviet program to be. I do 

 not mean that we have to meet ship for ship and that sort of thing, 

 but I feel that we are not moving ahead as fast as we should, and I 

 feel that there should be some mechanism in the Govemment which 

 would dramatize to the people in this country-, far more than is being 

 done, the need for this expanded program in order to get the expedit- 

 ing of it tliat I feel is essential and necessary, if we are going to 

 meet this problem. 



It seems to me that one of the fundamental ways to do that would 

 be to say if a program is essential to the welfare of this Nation and 

 perhaps even the survival of the Nation, why should it not receive 

 more recognition than an interagencv committee from an administra- 



