Science and Public Policy: Agency Mission 39 



by available manpower and promising scientific opportunities. 

 Almost any advance on a broad front will be virtually certain 

 to benefit the agency. In such unique fields, also, a fair fraction 

 of the fundamental knowledge needed will have to be ob- 

 tained through in-house or captive laboratory effort. The 

 efficient execution of any applied mission will almost certainly 

 require organized and directed effort in areas where under- 

 standing is so limited that basic research is necessary to ad- 

 vance the state of the art. Even here, however, the agency 

 cannot afford to be too parochial, and must be prepared to 

 support some basic research whose immediate relevance may 

 not be apparent. A classic example is ONR's extramural sup- 

 port for fundamental research on long range acoustic propaga- 

 tion in the 1940's at the Lamont Geological Observatory at 

 Columbia. At the time there was no specific end item in mind, 

 yet when missiles began to look like potential weapons systems, 

 the need arose for test ranges where missiles could impact at sea 

 and be accurately located. The results of the ONR sponsored 

 research immediately became the basis of the missile impact 

 location system now used at all the test ranges. The discovery 

 of the deep sound channel, now important for long range 

 underwater detection, was also a direct outgrowth of ONR 

 sponsored research in one of the oceanography laboratories. 



An important function of an agency is to stimulate interest 

 within the broad scientific community on problems important 

 to its future. One way in which this has been done is by 

 finding ways to translate applied problems of an agency into 

 generic scientific problems which can attract the continuing 

 interest and attention of first rate scientists. To achieve this in 

 any lasting way it is not sufficient to call attention to the 

 importance of a field; it is essential also to demonstrate its 

 intellectual challenge and the opportunity for genuine scien- 

 tific progress. ONR in its past has shown a particular talent 

 for this kind of imaginative stimulation. Examples are its 

 fostering of basic work in certain key university centers on 

 coastal geography and also on the general theory of port logis- 



