Undersea Vehicles 1970-1983: New Directions/Solid Achievements

In their defense, the undersea assessing and forecasting panels of the 1960s and early seventies were correct: the nation had deficiences in its undersea capabilities which were not being addressed, and they must be addressed if we were to understand and effectively utilize our ocean resources. The techniques which ultimately evolved in the mid- and late-seventies were not, however, those recommended. Where the study groups championed large, far-ranging submersibles and habitats to support and deploy small submersibles and divers under saturation, the eventual funders saw it quite differently. While the need for man in situ was certainly not abandoned, interest swung the other way: to Remotely operated vehicles and specialized manned submersibles. There are a variety of reasons for the failure to realize many of the more ambitious undersea vehicle projects of the sixties; there is only one reason to credit the phenomenal gains: offshore oil and gas. The variety of vehicles, supporting systems and instrumentation which this market spawned verges on the encyclopaedic. And all of it took place without hardly a drop of the government funds so urgently required. The federal government did, unknowingly and fortuitously, lay the basic technological groundwork from which most of the industrial developments manifested. US Navy research and development into materials, power sources, telemetry, propulsion, instrumentation and numerous other areas provided the foundation from which industry progressed. Hindsight prompts the notion that this was, perhaps, the course which should have been recommended. In spite of the sixtie´s recommendations, today´s capabilities to explore, exploit and research the undersea is far broader than what was envisioned. Perhaps the course of progress was almost 180 degrees out from the recommendations, but not to worry, no one in the sixties was forecasting oil at $36/barrel either.