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The Command's mission is to collect, inteipret. and apply 

 global environmental data and information for safety at sea and 

 for weapons system design, development, and deployment. 

 The Command also provides meteorological, oceanographic, 

 mapping, charting, and geodetic surveys to U.S. military forces 

 for use in operational missions. Three major components of this 

 command are described below: 



• The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) is the 

 largest single element of the Command and one of its two 

 master computer centers. Its primary mission is to conduct 

 oceanographic multidisciplinary surveys of the world's 

 oceans. Theofficecollectshydrographic, magnetic, geodetic, 

 chemical, navigation, and acoustic data using ships, aircraft, 

 spacecraft, and other platforms. 



was established in 1962 and was moved in 1978 from 

 Washington, D.C., to the Stennis Space Center (SSC), Bay St. 

 Louis, Mississippi, where it resides today. Also located at the 

 SSC is its parent command, the Naval Meteorology and 

 Oceanography Command that reports to the Chief of Naval 

 Operations (CNO) through the Oceanographer of the Navy. 



The Naval Aerological Service became the Naval Weather 

 Service in 1956. The Weather Bureau-Navy-Air Force Joint 

 Meteorological Weather Prediction Unit was activated in 

 Suitland, Maryland, in 1954, and moved to Monterey, Cali- 

 fornia, in 1959 to become the Naval Weather Service's Reet 

 Numerical Weather Central. Its first operational computer 

 center appeared in 1961. It was renamed the Fleet Numerical 

 Meteorology and Oceanography Center in 1993. 



• The Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center 

 (FNMOC) operates the other master computer center, and 

 produces global- and regional-scale meteorological and 

 oceanographic prediction products, including analyses, 

 forecasts, and tactical decision aids. These products are 

 tailored for direct operational use by Navy ships and aircraft. 



• The National Ice Center (NIC), formerly known as the Navy/ 

 NOAA Joint Ice Center, has as its primarj' mission providing 

 realtime, quantitative operational support concerning the 

 state of the polar oceans, and in particular the ice covers of 

 these oceans, to agencies of the U.S. government. Although 

 NIC does not provide direct project support to non- 

 governmental organizations, its pnmary unclassified product, 

 the bi-weekly global sea ice assessments, are available to the 

 general public via computer files. 



The components of this Command have been an integral part of 

 die development of meteorology, oceanography, and other 

 areas of geophysics in the U.S. The earliest part of the 

 organization was the Depot of Charts and Instmments (I860), 

 under Matthew Fontaine Maury, and the Naval Aerological 

 Service (1919). From 1842 to 1861 the organization was 

 referred to as the Observatory and Naval Hydrographic Office. 

 Later this office became the Naval Hydrographic Office ( 1 866), 

 responsible for charting and maintaining other vital data in 

 support of the Navy's needs. The Naval Oceanographic Office 



Today, the end result of an immense revolution in technology 

 combined with a growing understanding of ocean physics over 

 the past 100 years and changes in the conduct of naval warfare 

 is a Navy increasingly reliant on exploiting detailed physical 

 and acoustical data on the Earth's oceans. Consequently, the 

 Navy has invested in global ocean surveys and other large-scale 

 measurement programs, as well as supported the development 

 of sophisticated predictive models. 



Dunng the decades of the cold war, and continuing today with 

 a shift in emphasis toward shallower, littoral waters rather than 

 deep wate.-'s, the U.S. Navy has come to be the world's leader 

 in global ocean data and ocean-modeling capabilities. A 

 particularly telling and relevant indicator of the magnitude of 

 the U.S. Navy's investment in oceanography are the at-sea 

 surveys encompassing magnetic, gravity, and bathymetric 

 surveys involving about 100 ship-years of data collection. 



There is no other dimension of the global environment where so 

 much of our current scientific understanding and so many of the 

 fundamental measurements have been rooted in the efforts of 

 one of the military services. It is clear from the outset then that 

 the resources the Navy has devoted to oceanography and ocean 

 surveys have resulted in unique, extensive, and detailed databases 

 with no civilian counterpart. As we will see in this report, this 

 expectation was indeed realized over the course of the study. 



