16 Research and National Purpose 



mediate range ballistic missile, let us start out by remembering 

 that it was the Navy who spent the first government funds ever 

 allotted to the study of atomic fission in 1939, even before the 

 Manhattan Project, and that the Navy generated the first 

 interest in applications of atomic power to propulsion. ONR's 

 contributions to inertial navigation systems, in turn, permitted 

 us to locate our weapons launch point under the seas with 

 sufficient accuracy to help us guide the missiles to their targets. 

 Equally important has been ONR's early work in solid state 

 physics, computers, and other electronics. We should recall 

 also that ONR began the basic study of nitropolymers as 

 early as 1947, from which was to evolve much of our current 

 solid fuel technology, equally significant to both Polaris and 

 the Minuteman weapons system. The technological perform- 

 ance levels achieved by the Polaris system culminate, of course, 

 in the operational fact that it can be considered immune to 

 enemy attrition by any means likely to be available in the 

 next five years, to use the words of Mr. McNamara in his most 

 recent Posture Statement. Here is the measure of confidence 

 that we have in the system and of its importance to the national 

 security. 



Similar results of basic research, conducted in the course 

 of recent years, have done their share in making possible our 

 nuclear powered surface ships, the first of which are now mak- 

 ing history in the South China Sea as they are deployed in 

 action. All our ships, finally, are taking advantage daily of 

 ONR research as they make their navigational fixes more often 

 and more accurately with the aid of navigational satellites; 

 they depend for much of their air defense on weapons based 

 on infrared research which ONR had pushed and pioneered 

 for many years beginning in the late '40s; and our current 

 approach to command and control, with its use of communica- 

 tion satellites and the extensive application of automatic data 

 processing to signal and message, owes much to the work done 

 by ONR in the past. 



