Also, studies conducted by the National Academy of Engineers 

 (NAE) and the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the recent 

 report of the Commission on Marine Science, Engineering and 

 Resources, entitled Our Nation and The Sea , reflect the need for 

 a sound technology base. Elimination of technology deficiencies 

 within these 10 broad functional areas is not only required for 

 putting a vehicle at 20, 000 ft. or man at 2, 000 ft. , but is also 

 necessary to make work in the ocean at much lesser depths more 

 effective. 



Even though technical deficiencies in these areas are well 

 recognized, the Navy programs to eliminate them and to improve 

 our technology base are not entirely adequate. The reasons why 

 our R&D programs are not adequately addressing these functional 

 areas are many. Perhaps more often than is actually the case we 

 hear the words "funding limitations" and "budget cuts" given as 

 the reasons for not pursuing development more vigorously in cer- 

 tain areas. However, programs to improve and advance our tech- 

 nology base often suffer because technology development by itself 

 offers little visibility to the developing agency. For this reason, 

 laboratories have a tendency to put their resources toward a sys- 

 tem or even a capability development without first mastering the 

 technologies that are required to build an effective capability. The 

 laboratory may also put emphasis on a project because it is in- 

 triguing and offers visibility, but may result in limited benefit to 

 the Navy when compared to other problems that require solving. 



Efforts to eliminate these technical deficiencies are being 

 carried out in Exploratory Development programs, the Bio- Medical 

 program, the DOT project, and in cases where the deficiencies 

 limit hardware development, in the projects which are developing 

 systems capability. Technology deficiencies in each of the 10 

 functional areas will briefly be discussed in the following text. 



Power 



Power has been identified as one of the critical restraints in 

 deep ocean systems. In the area of power sources endurance, 

 reliability and high energy per unit weight and volume are primary 

 requisites for a wide variety of undersea applications. At present, 

 the lead acid and the silver zinc batteries represent the only avail- 

 able proved power sources for the near term submersible design. 

 Batteries have been a primary energy source because of their rel- 

 atively low cost, reliability and adaptability to submerged opera- 

 tions. However, they are naore frequently recognized by the 

 severe weight, space and endurance penalties they impose on 

 small vehicles. 



89 



