4'14 NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 



in the Department of Defense that the President has ordered this to 

 be followed as quickly and as soon as possible in the other depart- 

 ments of Govermnent. 



How it is working presently is that the discipline-oriented research 

 mission in the Government with respect to all science, and with 

 respect to ocean science as well, is in this fonn of accounting the 

 mission of the National Science Foundation. The mission of the 

 Navy in this form of accounting is military. I am not saying things 

 that I desire to see happening. I am telling you what I see happen- 

 ing. The effect of this is that the Navy's mission in ocean research is 

 being constricted year by year closer to that of mission-oriented ac- 

 tivity, v\dth the mission being strictly military. 



This has the following fallout : if it is militarily important it should 

 be classified; if it is militarily unimportant, it should not be in the 

 Navy's budget. That is the difficulty which ONR is having at the 

 present time, and I think it is an inescapable conclusion from this 

 budgeting practice. 



This leaves between the military mission of the Navy and the dis- 

 cipline-oriented mission of the National Science Foundation the whole 

 array of civilian science, technology, and engineering, tlie Federal 

 aspects, split among 20 small missions, fragmented to the point where 

 it is not possible under this system of budgeting to have a large enough 

 single mission to justify a substantial enough budget item to do a thing 

 ihat is needed for joint service requirements by several of these 20 

 fragments. 



I will state as only one example, the weather watch buoy system, 

 unmanned instrumented buoys. This will cost in the neighborhood of 

 about $50 million a year over a period of 5 years, a total of about 

 $250 million. The Weather Bureau, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 

 the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, the Bureaai of 

 Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, and some other entities, need the infor- 

 mation that would be so derived, very much. There is none of them 

 that has a large enough mission presently to justify a budget item of 

 that size on top of their other statutory responsibilities. 



The consequence of this, I believe, leads us inexorably toward a 

 f ur'ther consolidation of ocean-oriented offices and bureaus in the Fed- 

 eral Executive structure of the nature that the President has just 

 accomplished in the Department of Commerce, a consolidation of mis- 

 sions so that under cost-efficiency accounting there will emerge mission 

 of adequate size to justify the budget items that are required 

 for us to go forward in the occupation and use of the oceans. 



I have talked a little bit longer than I intended to, sir. I will wind 

 up by saying that any one of the bills presently before the committee, 

 if adopted and passed by the House and Senate and signed into law 

 by the President, would improve our present situation. We then come 

 to a consideration of two things: WTiat is the best thing to do, and 

 what is the practical thing that can be done ? 



Mr. Lennon's bill, H.R. 2118, has the great benefit that it has already 

 substantially in its present form passed the House and passed the 

 Senate in a former session, and has now been fixed up so the Executive 

 likes it. I think it is far short of what is needed, but it would be a 

 major step ahead. If this were put through, we would be well ahead 



