979 
Dr. Froscu. It was about $2.4 or $2.5 billion. 
Mr. Lennon. Yesterday afternoon about 5 o’clock the House Armed 
Services Committee added a billion dollars. Are you going to the 
Budget and going to the Appropriations Committee, assuming that 
this procurement bill is passed by the Congress, and make your fight 
for a viable Navy, or are you going to capitulate to the Bureau of the 
Budget, knowing, as you have indicated, the essentiality of moving 
forward with the construction of new vessels to replace many which 
are obsolete? What are you going to do? 
Dr. Froscu. The Navy will certainly be in favor of fighting for a 
strong Navy, but I am unable to say what the resolution between the 
Department of Defense and the Bureau of the Budget will be. 
Mr. Lennon. I know what it will be. You will fall back to $2.4 bil- 
lion when you go before the Appropriations Committee, instead of 
staying with the authorization bill which would provide $3.2 billion 
for the Navy. 
Go ahead. All right. 
Dr. Froscu. The relationships between the Department of Defense 
program and that of NOAA would need to be carefully coordinated 
both to prevent unnecessary duplication and to insure that the exis- 
tence of either program could not be used as an excuse to cut the other 
unwisely. 
The form in which National Advisory Committee on Oceanog- 
raphy is proposed seems to us to be unwise on several counts. The 
mechanism suggested would appear to put one operating agency 
(NOAA) and what amounts to its advisory group (NACO) 
in an effectively controlling position over other operating agencies 
with their own special mission requirements. This nearly guaran- 
tees petty conflict arising from the neutral tendency of NACO 
to regard NOAA jobs as more important than those of other agencies. 
The Department of Defense believes that an interagency group of 
representatives from the concerned organizations at, for example, the 
Assistant Secretary level, assisted by a group of outside advisers 
working with them, would be preferable to the NACO proposal. 
These groups might work throughout the year, but report to a 
more senior policy group like the present council, meeting annually to 
review the subject and report to the President. An alternative to a 
special senior policy group for annual review would be an annual 
review by the Federal Council on Science and Technology. 
None of these organizational schemes is perfect, and all seem some- 
what cumbersome, but the organization of a field that is principally 
defined by an environmental subject and area, although it does include 
some specific missions in it, in a government that otherwise tends to be 
principally functional and mission-oriented cannot be easy. 
It might also be noted that establishment of another independent 
agency reporting to the President may not be entirely wise. 
_ On the other hand, the Department of Defense believes that if an 
independent agency were created there might be legitimate objections 
to the subordination of it to any of the existing departments. 
Mr. Lennon. Mr. Secretary, you are suggesting that the members 
of NACO couldn’t rise above petty jealousies in the Department. 
That is what you are saying, isn’t it? 
