OCEAN SCIENCES AND NATIONAL SECURITY 43 



Undersea warfare is thus a deadlj' game of blind man's buff in which the winning 

 side is most likely to be that with most acute hearing.^^ 



Temperature gradients, layers of plankton which scatter sound, the 

 noise of the sea itself, complicate the problem, but the potential for 

 research is clear. The problem of "seeing without being seen" is a 

 major challenge to the Navy today. ]Making the ocean transparent by 

 underwater surveillance systems, while being able to operate free of 

 detection is a bivalent goal. 



On land we have networks of radars which plot the positions of all aircraft 

 to prevent collisions and to detect intruders. It cannot be too long before we 

 will h;.ve the counterpart of these crisscrossed networks in the sea — submarine 

 beacons radiating sound beams for the guidance of underwater craft as the 

 lighthouse uses a light beam to guide ships on the surface. Sound receivers 

 must be coupled together in a vast underwater spider web of millions of miles of 

 cables which, like our radar surveillance in the air space, can keep track con- 

 tinuously of normal comings and goings, yet single out any stranger in our midst. 

 To identify friend from foe is one of the most difficult underwater problems the 

 Navy has. 



All efforts to make the seas transparent for military purposes have a value 

 more lasting than the short-term gains of armed conflict l\v helping us to under- 

 stand the ocean.2^ 



Having defined military oceanography and suggested its urgency, 

 the reader will nevertheless note that studies referred to subsequently 

 by the National Academy of Sciences and by the Navy pertaui mainl}' 

 to sectors of oceanographic research which exclude immediate defense 

 applications. Developmental aspects of military oceanography, like 

 any other application, depends upon generation of basic knowledge; 

 when this fund of knowledge is deficient, as has been said to be the 

 case by those studj^ing the sea, potential for military as well as scien- 

 tific breakthroughs is very high. 



B. BASIC RESEARCH 



In a way almost unprecedented in history, peoples throughout the 

 entire world have had their interest aroused in the universe around us. 

 Man suddenly appears on the threshold of penetrating the reaches of 

 outer space with sufficient instrumentation and eventually with 

 manned vehicles to observe, measure, and interpret processes of 

 nature involving the Earth, the Moon, other planets, and eventually 

 the entire galaxy. To understand this complex system, however, 

 something of its origin, of its evolution and of its destiny— a great 

 deal needs to be known concerning the Earth itself. 



For example, one of the unsolved questions is whether the ocean 

 water and atmosphere were formed early in geologic time or whether 

 they grew slowly, perhaps squeezed out from the interior of the 

 planet. The formation and distribution of the continental masses 

 and oceanic depressions are by no means clear. The most that can be 

 said is that, and this was noted earlier, water in its liquid state dis- 

 tinguishes the Earth from the other planets; the Earth is just the 

 right distance from the Sun in terms of radiant energy it thus receives, 

 and the size of the planet and associated gravitational field are such 

 that both an atmosphere and water in liquid form are retained. 



The cliche that "past is prologue" must be considered to apply 

 rigidly in the case of natm^al laws. Predictions of the futm-e events 



26 "Oceanography 1951," op. cit., p. 18. 



" "Turn to the Sea," by Athelstan Spilhaii;;, Conimittep on Oceanography, National Academy of Sci- 

 ences, 1959, p. 11. 



