170 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



sibility of the Department of the Interior, and so they don't fight for 

 the appropriations the way they would if this was their whole life- 

 blood. You are not going to get the enthusiasm from the agency to 

 plan big and to fight big for their program until you do get them into 

 one agency. 



Now, we faced the same problem in space that we face in ocean- 

 ography, as far as the military application is concerned, and you and 

 I see that on the Armed Services Committee. We are constantly ques- 

 tioning the Air Force if they are doing enough in the space race, or if 

 they are letting NASA have too much authority. 



And, I think there is a problem, but we didn't take the prime mili- 

 tary responsibility for space away from Air Force and give it to 

 NASA. We recognized that Air Force should have that, and I think 

 you would have to recognize that with the Navy. The Navy operates 

 on the oceans. They have got to have a vital program, relating to re- 

 search and development on the military, the acoustics, the military 

 problems of inner space, if you want to call it that. 



Now, they will benefit from an oceanographic program, just like 

 Air Force benefits from NASA, but I don't visualize taking away 

 all the ASW activity of the Navy, and all the sonar activity and the 

 other related direct military oceanographic responsibilities, and put- 

 ting them into civilian agencies. I don't think this would be right 

 from a defense standpoint, any more than it would be right in the 

 space area to take away the space activity from the Air Force. 



Mr. Lennon. What would you take in a central agency? Wliat 

 agencies would you take from that are presently interested? 



Mr. Wilson. Well, for example, the Navy runs an oceanographic 

 data center. Now, this is something that the data from it, if it were 

 available, for every other peacetime oceanographic use, should be un- 

 der an outside agency; in other words, a nonmilitary agency. The 

 data does not have military implications, except in various minor ways. 

 It has to do with water temperatures, and so forth, but the Navy has 

 complete charge of that today, and I believe, until we can open up the 

 data that the Navy is accumulating and can make a bigger program 

 of data accumulation, that you are not goin^ to get a full return on the 

 dollar invested. And there is duplication m this area, particularly. 



Mr. Lennon. Well, of course, you and I know that, as far as the De- 

 partment of Defense is concerned, and particularly the Navy, they 

 have no difficulty at all in obtaining whatever authorization they re- 

 quest for any sonar or anything in the world related to oceanography. 

 Now, you recall just about 6 weeks ago that, without any debate or any 

 questions, we approved the bill or the authorization for two oceano- 

 graphic vessels for the Navy. 



Mr. Wilson. Right. 



Mr. Lennon. They run around $4 million each. 



If that same authorization had been before the Coast Guard Sub-',' 

 coimnittee, of which I happen to be a member, for an oceanographic 

 vessel costing that much, it would have taken us a month to make up 

 our minds that we ought to authorize that much money for ocean- 

 ography in the Coast Guard. 



Mr. Wilson. Well, Mr. Chairman, you forget this : that the Navy, 

 when the program originates at the working level in the Navy, has to 

 run a gantlet of the Navy budget officers and then the Budget Bureau, 



