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veillance system, the component of which is most important to 

 them would be the SOSUS network, the fixed-array network. 



That's a ticklish area. The CNO is working very hard to take a 

 hard look at that to see what can be really extracted or can be 

 sanitized and made available. 



That is critically important. 



They don't have the money to keep all these arrays alive. We 

 work with them — NOAA triggered off an issue with the Secretary 

 of Defense last year and we were very much involved with our aca- 

 demic institutions to come together and say, what do you really 

 need the information for from the fixed arrays that have gone after 

 Russian submarines all these years? Isn't that valuable? 



Well, of course it's valuable — for seismic projections, for fisheries 

 tracking, for a whole host of things that we don't even know about 

 yet, for acoustic thermometry of the oceans. 



How do we really measure what is happening in global tempera- 

 ture? 



Well, the greatest heat source in the world is the ocean. And if 

 we can monitor that and get it down to within two-tenths of a de- 

 gree Centigrade, we can really talk about global warming and what 

 it's doing and whether man is doing this or whether nature is doing 

 it in a much clearer way. 



So that's just one network alone. It's tremendously valuable. It's 

 a $16 billion investment. And that information needs to be moved. 



The CNO has to get into the act himself. If it doesn't, the bu- 

 reaucratic system will give it a 30-year period. I don't think it has 

 to be that way with modern technology. We need to look at this 

 much more rapidly than we have in the past. 



When I was CNO ten years ago, we could look at things at a 

 slower pace. We can't any more because technology outruns us. 

 And much of the information we're now classifying, in my opinion, 

 has been in the open literature for years elsewhere. 



Right today, for example, we're what we call dithering the GPS 

 satellite. That means we're sending out information that only cer- 

 tain receivers can receive. 



Well, do we need to do that right now? Is the world threat such 

 that we can't allow that data to go out? 



I believe it can go out. 



Mr. Farr. Is that an administrative decision or is that one that 

 needs congressional authorization? 



Admiral Watkins. I don't know. I don't want to get into Sec- 

 retary Perry's business because it may be a very valid reason. It's 

 not clear to any of our researchers that you have to do that because 

 there are alternatives means to get that kind of position accuracy 

 that we desperately need to do the kind of work we need, precision 

 scientific work. 



So I think we're way behind the power curve on trying to mod- 

 ernize our way to declassify information that's already out there 

 because of modern technology leaps in the private sector, where 

 satellites today are giving the kind of imagery that allowed the 

 CNO to downgrade the GEOSAT data of earlier years. 



So I think we've got a lot to do there. And I really do believe that 

 the Department of Defense has not been as aggressive as I think 

 they could have been under the Environmental Task Force. 



