Science and Public Policy: National Security 119 



during part it has played in the security of our nation and of 

 our lives. As is fitting, the Navy itself is also being modulated 

 by this philosophy, and sees in such astonishing options as the 

 new realms of quantum electronics, a future responsive to its 

 exacting needs. Many of these lie, of course, in the decisive 

 realm of command and control facilities, on which we've had 

 little time to touch. Nevertheless, the same themes that we have 

 tried to develop before apply ever more strongly there. Indeed, 

 crucial and basic scientific judgments of the role of solid state 

 components, of new signal processing techniques, and the im- 

 pact of digital computing machines led in operational terms 

 to the establishment of the DCA (Defense Communications 

 Agency) through the offices of Special Assistant to the President 

 for Science and Technology, at the end of President Eisen- 

 hower's administration and at the beginning of President 

 Kennedy's. The next step was action on the findings and the 

 recommendations of President Kennedy's Orrick Committee 

 for the establishment of the National Communications System, 

 available to all security forces as well as to other government 

 agencies. Development of new circuit switching schemes for 

 global networks, in contrast to the traditionally dedicated mes- 

 sage switching networks of the separate military services, marks 

 one more domain where combinations of basic scientific prin- 

 ciple dictated what is proving to be an increasingly effective 

 course of action. 



With regard to the Navy's own concerns for electronics and 

 command and control systems, the appreciation of what basic 

 discovery can provide is indirectly reflected in the recent testi- 

 mony of Assistant Secretary Morse, that one third of the 50 

 research programs carrying priority designation are in the elec- 

 tronics field. Thus, in a total research and development test 

 and engineering budget for the next fiscal year of $1.7 billion, 

 the Navy has followed its own scientific precepts. It consistently 

 allotted to systems such as the Integrated Light Attack Avionics 

 system, the Omega navigation system, using atomic clock fre- 

 quency control, and various submarine satellite navigation sys- 



