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the money, we have to open everything we can up to competition. 

 It's something that nobody denies. It's just hard to get it done. 



But the scientific community urges the Congress to keep your 

 eye on whether or not your funds are being competitively bid for. 

 We all know the importance of that in the market and it's also im- 

 portant in science to get the best value for your money. 



Mr. Weldon. I think it was important to get that on the record 

 in this time of shrinking budget dollars, that the scientific commu- 

 nity believes that we need to have that peer review process in 

 place. 



Another question for Admiral Boorda relative to the autonomous 

 underwater search system, AUSS. My understanding is that that 

 was originally developed for the potential retrieval of space cap- 

 sules. 



Is that currently being used for scientific purposes, and could 

 that be used for scientific purposes involving deep ocean research 

 and deep ocean technology? 



Admiral BoORDA. We have looked at that for a number of pur- 

 poses, one of them being what do we do with dredging materials 

 if we put it in a different place than on land? 



Mr. Weldon. Yes. 



Admiral BooRDA. I'll defer to Paul on some of the other ideas we 

 might have. 



Admiral Gaffney. We're looking at all autonomous vehicles and 

 ROVs for collecting data at sea, not just AUSS but other tech- 

 niques developed by Dr. Ballard and his colleagues for doing rou- 

 tine survey overseas. 



One of the early questions we had here is how do we meiximize 

 our time at sea? And one of those ways is to get new tools that we 

 can use to double or triple the collecting power of overseas deployed 

 ships. 



And these kinds of vehicles would be such tools. 



Mr. Weldon. So the answer is then, yes, it can be made avail- 

 able and you're working to that end. Is that correct? 



Mr. Roemer has an additional question which I'll allow him to 

 ask now. Mr. Roemer? 



Mr. Roemer. Did you want to follow on? Did you have an3rthing 

 you wanted to follow up on? 



Mr. Weldon. Staff has asked me, the Navy research submarine, 

 is it still active and an expanded role in terms of involvement with 

 the scientific community? 



Admiral BoORDA. Yes. This last summer, it worked in the Medi- 

 terranean. The answer is, yes, it's still active and doing a number 

 of jobs. 



Mr. Weldon. Great. 



Dr. Ballard. I can add to that. I was the one that was using it. 



[Laughter.] 



It's been made more accessible to the academic community and 

 it's a tremendous asset. It's being able to do much more work be- 

 cause it's not only a great submarine, but it now has a great sup- 

 port ship that can support remotely-operated vehicle systems and 

 we'll be using it during the JASON project in a few months. 



Mr. Weldon. Great. Fantastic. 



Mr. Roemer? 



