On 6 September 1995, the White House announced the termination of one of the United States’ three uniformed maritime services, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Commissioned Corps. The White House Home Page of the Internet reported the following "Remarks by the President at Reinventing Government Event” held 7 September 1995, in the Rose Garden:
Believe it or not, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a core [sic] of 400 officers who command a fleet of less than 10 old ships. I think that we can be adequately protected by the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines and the Coast Guard. So we’re going to stop paying for those 10 old ships and use the money for better purposes.
A similarly flawed pronouncement in the National Performance Review II, released on 6 September (which proposed reinvention initiative DOC2-05, to eliminate the NOAA Commissioned Corps), prompted the regrettably inaccurate Rose Garden statement. In truth, however, NOAA has a Corps of 400 officers who hold presidential commissions of maritime rank for the purpose of conducting, supporting, and managing NOAA’s scientific programs and missions—not just operating ships. The parent agency, NOAA, has 16 ships that continue to operate in the world’s oceans in performance of oceanographic, hydrographic, and fisheries missions that sustain national environmental security. These unique ships are built for science and perform vital environmental functions. They are not designed for national defense—though uniformed personnel have a statutory obligation of transfer to the Department of Defense in time of war or national emergency, as does the Coast Guard. Most of NOAA’s ships were built in the 1960s, but they continue to operate with 98% user satisfaction, despite their age. While the mission of national defense is delegated appropriately to the armed services, NOAA and its precursor agencies have found it economical to engage the utility, responsiveness, and flexibility of a small uniformed force. The 400 NOAA Corps commissioned officers give NOAA—an agency of 13,000 employees—a small source of operationally skilled scientist- managers in uniform—not only to command research ships and aircraft but also to serve in technical, management, and operational positions throughout the Nation’s ocean and atmospheric agency. We do not just drive ships, and that the Commander-in-Chief could be so misinformed by his staff as to the mission purpose of the NOAA Corps is of tragic consequence to our heritage.
Today, NOAA is challenged with seven primary goals and objectives outlined in its Strategic Plan. The NOAA Corps is pivotal in the accomplishment of six of the seven goals: providing short-term weather warning and forecasts, making climate forecasts and predictions, promoting safe navigation, building sustainable fisheries, recovering protected species, and sustaining healthy coastal ecosystems. These goals cut across the five major organizational entities of NOAA: nautical charting, weather, fisheries, environmental satellites, and oceans and atmospheric research. The NOAA Corps is the only personnel system within NOAA to assign personnel routinely across these insular organizational entities and thereby facilitate the attainment of these goals; 55% of the officers in the NOAA Corps have had assignments in two or more of these organizations.
Antagonists of the NOAA Corps are looking for contract work, rather than the Nation’s best interests. As Department of Defense and National Science Foundation moneys began drying up, it became time to look at what was left of the government’s maritime missions, with the NOAA Corps painted as a fat target. Couple that with negligible mission support from the Department of Commerce, and disaster is only one shoal ahead.
Perhaps unwisely, the NOAA Corps performed its mission quietly. NOAA ships and commissioned officers led the rapid scientific response and assessment of oil spill damage in Prince William Sound and in the Persian Gulf. Today, NOAA ships are: performing the first comprehensive scientific study of the Indian Ocean, surveying mid-ocean dolphin and whale populations, assessing harvestable fisheries populations, measuring mid-ocean air and sea interactions to predict climactically devastating phenomena such as the El Nino, and surveying remote and uncharted Alaskan waters. NOAA aircraft routinely penetrate hurricanes to study storm propagation and evolution. When these missions are complete, those in uniform are reassigned to managing data collection and compilation programs, or to bring the reality of their field experience to program management positions or operations support. The benefits to NOAA are in the low personnel cost (NOAA Corps officers are paid under Title 37 as are officers in the other services); in the flexibility of immediate assignment; and in the ability to integrate management, technology, and operations in one unique and capable force.
NOAA supports its officer corps and the mission it performs, but that support is replaced by a lack of understanding at the Department of Commerce, the parent Cabinet under which NOAA resides. NOAA comprises about 50% of the Commerce budget and nearly 50% of its personnel, but at the working level Commerce is reluctant to embrace the Agency, and to an even lesser extent, the uniformed service. Historically, Commerce staff members are selected for their expertise in commercial ventures, banking, and commerce, attributes foreign to the necessary scientific and technical understanding of NOAA’s air and ocean science mission. This lack of understanding breeds a lack of respect, mission recognition, and purpose; suspicion and mistrust result. Take, for example, a 1990 audit of the NOAA Corps performed by the Commerce Inspector General. By apparently couching the terms of the study to encompass only selective costs, the Inspector General audit report constructed a 59% excess cost differential between NOAA Corps and “comparable” civilians. This year, in response to an internal NOAA study of the NOAA Corps, the independent national accounting firm of Arthur Andersen determined the cost of the NOAA Corps to be less than that of an equivalent civilian work force. The difference between 59% and 0% only can be filled with the suspicion of incompetence or animus. The internal study of the NOAA Corps has yet to be released by NOAA. A study by the General Accounting Office on the NOAA Corps also is near completion and due within months.
Any fault in a failing to understand the role of the NOAA Corps rests on the NOAA Corps itself—for performing its duties without self-aggrandizement. Few have taken notice of the work of this small service. Apparently, the quiet competence of the NOAA Corps did not escape Vice President A1 Gore, who only 18 months ago, wrote to the officers of the NOAA Corps:
I am pleased to say that as members of the NOAA Corps, you have made many important contributions to the study of our marine and atmospheric environments over the years. The Corps’ research ships and aircraft and the leadership of its commissioned officers have made it possible to conduct a wide range of scientific research and operational activities. . . . The NOAA Corps has provided valuable support to the other uniformed services in times of war and will continue to play an important role in supporting safe navigation, sustaining the health and harvest of our oceans, and providing advance warnings of hazardous weather conditions.
This is the season of lust in pursuit of privatization, resulting in the rape of productive elements of government. While wasteful entities should fall to reinventions, I pause to evaluate the propriety of a decision to terminate the NOAA Corps when GAO- and NOAA-sponsored studies remain open and unreported. Perhaps the heated rush to eliminate a maritime service could be cooled long enough to complete ongoing studies, provide congressional hearings, and announce a result commanding confidence in the decision, demonstrable by a clear understanding of the NOAA Corps mission, rather than an apparent ignorance thereof.
Lieutenant Commander McLean is a commissioned officer of the NOAA Corps, having served 14 years active duty. He has served on board hydrographic survey and fisheries ships and has served in four separate elements of NOAA.