b THE NAVY OCEAN SCIENCE PROGRAM 



Ocean Science Program. If projects were largely scientific, or 

 clearly in support of scientific inquiry, then they were made 

 part of the Navy Ocean Science Program. Much of this program 

 is carried out as an integral pgut of other specific mission- 

 oriented activities, such as undersea warfare and amphibious 

 warfare. This coupling is necessary to ensure direct and adequate 

 input of environmental understanding into systems, equipments, 

 and operations vital to the national security. The interactions 

 among scientists and engineers in research programs, those in 

 systems development, and naval officers and operations analysts 

 must be a continual process for each to be productively aware of 

 the capabilities, knowledge, and needs of the others. The scien- 

 tist must be somewhat aware of operational requirements if the 

 environmental knowledge he develops is to be useful to the naval 

 line officer, just as the naval officer or the operations analyst 

 must know the true extent of environmental influence. It is 

 extremely difficult to maintain adequate exchange among these 

 groups even within the same organization. It is doubtful that a 

 non-naval environmental research group could achieve a fruitful 

 involvement in Navy problems, except for short periods. 



The Assistant Oceanographer for Ocean Science has under 

 his cognizance a spectrum of groups and types of support which, 

 when combined, constitute a well-balanced ocean-science 

 program for the Navy. The Office of Naval Research, under 

 its contract research program, has long fostered the support 

 and development of centers of excellence in the area of ocean 

 science. Consequently, the ONR program is oriented toward 

 institutional and unversity contracts, for programs that have 

 been developed jointly by that office and the laboratory directors 

 and staffs. These contracts provide a broadly based program 

 to support the variety of Navy needs. In addition, ONR has 

 long maintained a policy of continuity of support; that is, it 

 has attempted to provide stability in a field of science where 

 capital and operating costs for research are higher than average. 

 To further focus the Navy Ocean Science Program under the 

 Chief of Naval Research, two actions have recently been taken. 

 Internally, within ONR several programs were combined in 



