997 
bilities in the area it is hard to see how one could produce an ideal 
coordination pattern because so many of the individual problems in- 
volve the missions of more than one agency. 
Mr. Detienpack. Recognizing the difficulties, recognizing also the 
importance and recognizing the split responsibility of the Navy be- 
tween the military and the civil because the Navy’s reach is broad 
in this field, do you feel that that which is workable at the present 
time should be improved ? 
Dr. Froscu. Oh, yes. 
Mr. Detienpack. Do you feel it can be improved ? 
Dr. Froscn. Yes, I think it can be improved. 
Mr. Dretitenspack. Do you feel that it would be desirable that we 
make a major change or major improvement at least in the emphasis 
in the area of national priorities directed to the broad sweep of what 
is involved in this general subject under consideration, or would you 
make peripheral, relatively minor additional emphasis attached to it ? 
Dr. Froscu. I think we need some considerable improvement in 
emphasis in order to do the jobs that are clearly already important. 
It is not clear to me that we should attempt to make the oceans a major, 
or the major national priority. I think this would be a little like push- 
ing on a string. 
Mr. Detienpack. Are you making a distinction between a major 
and the major ? 
Let’s not say the major. Do you say that you would not make the 
oceans and the atmosphere a major project ? 
Dr. Frosci. It is hard for me to put this in my own mind on a list 
in terms of where major begins. It is clear that we have important 
jobs to do and important dependencies on the ocean and the atmos- 
phere. I think it is clear that over the next decade the ocean is in 
many ways going to become more important to us than it has been 
in the past. 
I think what I am trying to wonder about a little bit is at exactly 
what rate we should try to expand the priority and the nature of work 
in this area. 
Mr. Detrenpack. Would you make the expansion an implemental 
one or would you make it a great leap forward ? 
Dr. Froscu. I think at this point I would be most concerned about 
improving the organizational arrangements and the efficiency of what 
we are now doing with some incremental increase, but I think until 
we do that and get ourselves sorted out by some mechanism or other 
so that we understand where we want to go that an attempt to make 
a great leap forward might lead us into considerable difficulty. 
Mr. Detrenpack. This is important because I am not sure, you see, 
that we are really then seeing eye to eye on this because if I read 
correctly what you are telling us, then I think that I as one member 
of the subcommittee may have a real, basic, fundamental, underlying 
point of disagreement with you. 
If what you are talking about is really business as usual on this 
broad-sweep area with all its complexity, and maybe improvement 
of a peripheral nature, advance of a peripheral nature, revising that 
which is but not really fundamentally changing it, then I am not 
persuaded that we can really effectively accomplish great results in 
connection with the ocean and atmosphere in this manner. 
