IS OCEAN SCIENCES AND NATIONAL SECURITY 



is urgent, tochiiology has always produced a defense against the prom- 

 ise of the new ofTense, and the submarine menace can liardlv be 

 expected to be immune from an analogous developm<'nt. 



The problem lies within the sea — and students of the i)roblem say 

 that the sohilion must be souglit witliin the sea. More sensitive 

 listening equipment even now is known to pick up the sounds of 

 underwater life, such as the clicks of slu'imp, the grunts of certain fish, 

 the groans and moans of unknown sources, the background noises of 

 the surface waves, the reflections from underwater mounds and bottom 

 irregularities. But in the interleaving layers of waim water and cold, 

 in the upwelling of currents, underwater sounds are reflected and 

 refracted such that grave difficulty exists in establishing a higli degree 

 of reliability in detecting unwanted underwater o])iects. Antisub- 

 marine units frequently chase ''ghosts." 



Herein lies the core of the A8W problem — study of the medium 

 itself, on the basis of which a strong defense could be erected against 

 the surprise of underwater missile launching subs. 



The necessity of an enhanced undersea defense has thus been cited as 

 the primary stimulus j or an accelerated program of oceanographic ■'<tudy, 

 a point of view supported by a number of tlie Mendn'rs of C\)ngress 

 as the following excerpts of but a few similar speeches show: 



Senator Hubert H. Humpiu'cy (Mimiesota), in a statement on 

 "Importance of Studies in Oceanograph\-," (\)H{/ressi(>nal Record, 

 February 17, 1959, pages 2279-2280 noted': 



******* 



About a year ago, Dr. Brown di8cus.sed with me for the first time the state of our 

 Nation's knowledge of the oceans surrounding us, and the fact tliat the scientists 

 of the Soviet Union were hard at work not only in rockets and missiles, but in 

 oceanography — the study of the oceans and of the life within them. 



I was powerfully reminded that we of the West — the Atlantic Community, the 

 nations whose common physical bond is the Atlantic shoreline — have, in still 

 another major lapse of attention, very nearly permitted ourselves to be left in 

 the wake of another surge of Soviet scientific advance. I came to realize how 

 pitifully inadetjuate was our knowledge of the seas which traditionally have t^een 

 the lifelines of the Western World — over which far more than )iine-tenths of ail 

 our men and material moved during World War II, and over which our forces 

 Howed to Korea and to the later trouble spots of tlie world that required the 

 presence of American armed forces. 



I came to realize that the ocean deeps and the offshore shelves of the continents 

 would ever increasingly become the arena in which the fateful decisions of war 

 might very well be fought. 



The intense concentration of the Soviet Ihiion on submarine development and 

 construction — to a degree surpassing l)y five times the prewar effort of Nazi 

 Germany — began to be seen in its proper per.spective. Soviet effort on submarine 

 building, Soviet ]:)rogress in missile development, totaled a program of awesome 

 dimensions for the offensive use of the ocean spaces. 



Mr. President, let me add that the Soviet Union seeks to make the ocean its 

 great base of oj^erations — a base which covers three-fifths of the Earth's surface^ 

 ******* 



Among the two great gaps, then, in our national armor is the failure to nuiintain 

 even a fraction of the modernized, mobile, but conventional forces needed to deter 

 Communist conventional probings and attacks. 



The second great gap is related both to the problem of dealing with conventional 

 or limited war and to that of preserving a true deterrent against massive strategic 

 attack on the United States. This is the gap caused by our ignorance of the 

 secrets of the oceans, the marked failure of the antisubmarine science 1o keep up 

 with the progress being made by the world's submariners, and the all-out construc- 

 tion program of the Soviet undersea force. 



The Soviet submarine threat to the vital sea supply lanes of the Western World, 

 coupled with the probability — as the Chief of Naval Operations indicated recently 

 to my subcommittee — -that the Soviet Union now has missile-carrying submarines, 



