improved sensors and to quickly transition technological advances 

 from research to the operations. 



Navy Oc ean Partnerships 



The idea of partnerships is certainly not new to Navy. The 

 Navy ocean program relies heavily on advances in basic research 

 from academia; other agencies provide backup operational support; 

 and Navy obtains vast quantities of global data from national and 

 international civil oceanography sources. In fact, the 

 overwhelming majority of the METOC data used on a day-to-day 

 basis to support Navy operations is not collected by Navy. 



On the other hand, Navy is a major provider of oceanographic 

 information and expertise, as well as a user. Navy makes over 90 

 percent of its environmental data and products available to the 

 public, either in real-time or through later declassification, 

 and these support a wide range of civil applications. Tax 

 dollars invested in Naval oceanography support the public -- 

 either directly or indirectly -- through development of new 

 materials and technologies, deep sea research, satellite remote 

 sensing, the development of undersea vehicles, overseas nautical 

 charts, typhoon warnings, oceanographic and meteorological data 

 bases, ice forecasts and other prediction models, precise time, 

 and data that support environmental quality studies. Navy also 

 builds ocean research vessels for universities to operate. The 

 last ship in a recent upgrade of the university fleet, the 

 research vessel ATLANTIS (AGOR 25) , will be launched next week in 

 Pascagoula, Mississippi and turned over to the Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution for operation. 



Many important partnerships are already in place, and there 

 are some real success stories. 



A basic and applied research experiment conducted in 1995 at 

 the Army Corps of Engineers Facility in Duck, North Carolina, 

 highlights the importance of dual-use partnerships in coastal 

 ocean research. ONR, through a partnership with the Army Corps 

 of Engineers, the National Science Foundation, U.S. Geological 

 Survey, and a number of other agencies, initiated a project to 

 better characterize the coastal environment using a variety of 

 in-place and remote sensing devices. Results of this experiment, 

 now emerging in scientific journals, will provide a basis for 



