RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NAVIGATIONAL IMPORT AT THE U. S. NAVAL OCEANOGRAPHIC OFFICE

Halford Woodson and Dr. Charles C. Bates

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Introduction WHAT’S NEW at the 137-year old organization that now calls itself the U. S. Naval Oceanographic Office, or, for short, NAVOCEANO? In this period of challenge and change perhaps the item of greatest import is the recent major changes in the organization and operational concepts of the Oceanographic Office. In my talk today, I will briefly review some of these administrative changes and also touch upon some of the actual development efforts underway. Oddly enough, the title of this paper as printed in the program, namely, ‘Research and the U. S. Naval Oceanographic Office” is somewhat misleading. Fund-wise, our total true research effort at NAVOCEANO is still minuscule-, it will be about $250,000 this fiscal year, while our total development effort will be about $10,500,000-a ratio of 1:42. This imbalance, stems in part from the fact that though NAVOCEANO is probably, in conjunction with the Naval Observatory, the oldest scientific and technical organization in the Navy, the Office was not treated as a Naval laboratory during the evolution of the extensive network of these facilities in the 1920’s, 1930's and 1940's. Rather, it was funded as a service organization primarily using “Operations and Maintenance Funds” appropriations. Change definitely began to set in as far back as 1962 when the mission of the Office was redefined to include: “To enhance the combat’ readiness of the Navy by providing oceanographic and navigational data, (including) performing or recommending related research, development, testing and evaluation-”
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 15, Number 2
Pages:	119 - 126
Cite this article:	Woodson, Halford, Bates, Dr. Charles C., "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF NAVIGATIONAL IMPORT AT THE U. S. NAVAL OCEANOGRAPHIC OFFICE", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer 1968, pp. 119-126.
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