The impact of new technology on the evolutionary development of sea power and its influence in world affairs is not always clear or discernible at the time of its introduction. The bold innovators who introduced steam, aircraft, and nuclear power into naval development were well aware that some major effect on sea power was thus presaged, but could not discern at that time the battleship fleets of the first half of the century, nor the carrier squadrons and ballistic missile submarines of today. It may well be presumptuous, therefore, to attempt to forecast the future effects of a developing technology which permits occupation and manned operation of the sea bed. Unfortunately, the accelerated tempo of modern technology threatens to change the evolutionary development of international relationships into one more revolutionary in nature. It therefore behooves the naval strategist to anticipate, no matter how haltingly, the effect of each new technological development, and to suggest the time scale and scope of measures which must be taken to ameliorate disruptive changes. Fortunately, a number of major constraints on the use of the sea have remained unchanged for many centuries. We may therefore expect empirical relationships derived from observations of naval history to have validity today. There are also available for study, many changes in the evolution of sea power; from raft, to oar, to sail, to steam, and to nuclear power, which permits some identification of the nature of the evolutionary process. In the hope of stimulating thought and insight, let us: restate in today’s terminology those principles of sea power enunciated by Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890 which appear to have relevance today; outline in brief an evolutionary pattern of the development of sea power; summarize and project the state-of-art in the technology of naval capability at or near the sea bed; and derive therefrom the probable effects of this technology on the future of sea power.
The foundation of this thesis is the assumption that three fundamental constraints on the use of the sea have not significantly changed since the dawn of sea power, viz., the law of the sea, the speed of transit of vehicles on or in the sea, and the geopolitical configuration of the sea-land interface. The first of these constraints, the law of the sea, has remained fundamentally unchanged since the ancient Codes of Amalfi, the Rhodian Code and the Laws of Oleron, and provides for the free use of the sea by all nations engaged in legitimate commerce and even for recognized belligerents engaged in the conduct of formally declared war. This particular provision, unique to the sea, is so ingrained in custom that it is rarely recognized as a prime constraint in the design of naval systems such as the Polaris submarine system which must remain undetected in waters in which potential enemies may freely traffic and search.
The present embodiment of the law of the sea can be found in the partially ratified United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 29 April 1958. Although agreement on this convention was hampered by unilateral attempts to extend the territorial waters from three miles to six, twelve and even 200 miles, no significant effect on the basic rights and freedoms of the seas has yet been discernible.
The second constraint on the use of the sea, transit speed, results from the hydrodynamic power law which requires (to a first order of approximation) an increase in horsepower proportional to the cube of the velocity of vehicles immersed in the medium. Vehicle speeds significantly above those already attained will require more horsepower per unit volume than technology seems to indicate is possible. Thus, while remarkable gains have been made in the powering of ships, 37 they have been evidenced primarily by the provision of assured and continuous speed rather than by major increases in absolute speed. Increases in speed will assuredly be realized, but even the most optimistic naval architect does not project for the future speeds in excess of 60 knots for vehicles which are fully wetted. Even at 60 knots the nature of the speed constraint does not change, for this constraint has the curious effect of making credible national intent when a major task force is deployed to a particular conflict theater. So long as the redeployment time of such a force is long as compared with political action time, the original action cannot be construed as a feint or bluff. Therefore, for the foreseeable future, the sea will continue to be a mechanism for providing both political and military presence in a manner which transmits messages stronger than words.
The third constraint on sea power, the constancy of geopolitical or geologistical relationships derives from the massive engineering undertakings which are required to alter them. Indeed, the relationships between sea and land masses have been changed in a major way only twice in history, with the construction of the Suez and Panama Canals, and in lesser ways with the construction of the Kiel Canal, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and other such interconnecting waterways.
The effect of these three constraints has been that throughout recorded history, sea power has been deployed freely, credibly, surely, and with constrained, deliberate speed by those nations whose geologistics are favorably oriented with respect to the sea. The imaginative reader may quickly perceive how at least two of these constraints may be modified by an effective occupation of, or utilization of, the bottom of the sea. It is already clear that the law of the sea bed will be quite different than the law of the sea, and the interaction between these quite differing legal concepts will undoubtedly modify both. Less easily perceived is the effect of utilization of the sea bottom on the geologistics of the sea. The possibility of underwater or semisubmerged offshore loading platforms, for example, could introduce into competitive commerce those nations whose rugged coastline otherwise forbids such enjoyment of the sea. Such modifications have not as yet appeared even with the introduction of nuclear power and armament. We should, therefore, expect that empirical laws derived while these constraints were still in force to be equally valid today.
These relationships were perhaps most effectively enunciated by Rear Admiral Mahan in his famous study of sea power in 1890. A restatement of these principles is essential to an analysis of the effect of occupation or operations at the sea bed:
The sea provides a domain in which national power and continuing political presence may be effectively projected to the territorial limits of other nations having boundaries on the sea. The ability of a nation to use this element of national powers depends:
First, upon the conformation and topology of the land and water masses;
Second, upon the nature of the coast line in terms of its capacity for harbors and access to the major sea routes;
Third, upon the number of people in the vicinity of the sea having competence in and an understanding of the technology of the sea;
and fourth, upon the character of the people and their government.
The first of these determinants of sea power, the topology of the land and water masses, is crucial for the subsequent discussion of the effect of occupation of the sea bed. The topological relationship determines the ease with which a fleet can be deployed around the sea perimeters of a maritime nation as well as the size and disposition of land armies which are required to protect the land boundaries. Mahan accorded primacy in this element of sea power to nations for which the effective sea boundaries are singly connected, i.e., the entire coast line can be patrolled by a single transit and without the necessity to pass or round the coast line of another nation. The island is the best example of this relationship. On this basis, Mahan correctly predicted the future importance of Malta in the Mediterranean as evidenced by its key role in holding the balance to Mussolini’s Mare Nostrum. He predicted the future importance of Cuba in the Caribbean as now evidenced by its position as the single intrusion of Communist domination in the Western Hemisphere. His prime example, of course, was Great Britain and its effectiveness as a balance to the entire European continent. Had Rear Admiral Mahan looked to the Pacific, he would no doubt have identified the significance of the Japanese Islands and Formosa as balances to the Asiatic mainland. Had he looked toward Africa, he would have identified Madagascar as being similarly crucial.
While islands and peninsulas such as the Italian Boot or the Portuguese Coast provide a positive basis for the use of sea power, nations having multiple coasts find themselves in a position of naval inferiority. In this instance, it is more than the necessity to maintain two separate navies that creates the difficulty. Invariably, the competition between the several coasts for allocation of national resources for naval purposes is reinforced by the demands from the dwellers along the land borders for adequate armies. The political pressure is usually resolved by the inhabitants of the interior and there results a polarization along the land axis which favors the development of armies over the development of multiple competing navies. As Mahan pointed out, the United States Would be in this position until a canal was built across the Isthmus of Panama. It was left to another great student of naval history, Theodore Roosevelt, to implement that foresight in 1910. In terms of modern commerce, however, this canal no longer has the capability or size effectively to maintain this geologistic relationship. In fact, we are again a doubly connected sea domain with competition for naval and maritime power on both coasts and no longer the singly connected domain at the scale of commerce we enjoyed from 1914 through World War II.
The second element of the Mahan thesis derives from the value which accrues to a nation from a coast line which permits the development of harbor and inland transportation systems. Thus, Great Britain with its myriad of navigable waterways in the Thames, the Tyne, and the Clyde River basins is in a far superior position to use the sea than is its island neighbor, Ireland. The Eastern United States has been in the position of Britain with its extensive inland waterways, its network of great inland rivers such as the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Hudson, and the St. Lawrence which have made possible large cities as remote from the ocean as Minneapolis or Cincinnati. On the West Coast, however, the lack of navigable rivers has limited the development of large cities to relatively few good harbors, i.e., San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. Until the dredging of the Sacramento River, the West Coast had only one inland city, Portland, Oregon, connected to the ocean. At first blush, it would seem that only mighty engineering modifications to the coast lines could rectify such deficiencies until it is realized that it is solely the free surface and its chaotic forces in open waters that restricts use of the majority of the sea coast. Were the creation of submerged off-shore platforms technically feasible for the transport of goods along the sea bed to the Coast, the effect of this relationship would be minimized.
The third element of the Mahan restatement pertains to the number of people within the vicinity of the sea coast having a knowledge of maritime technology. An overly restrictive view of United States technology would lead to the false conclusion that the country is limited by its supply of oceanographers or by the total number of professionals classified as naval architects or in the purely maritime systems. Such a reckoning does not take into account the very large reservoir of maritime technology which has been acquired in military programs such as the Fleet Ballistic Missile Program, or the extensive antisubmarine warfare programs, or by the space programs in their recoveries at sea, or by the oil industry in its extensive offshore drilling operations. Indeed, it is not too difficult to identify at least four billion dollars of human resources in the United States which is annually expended in some phase of the technology of the sea.
The final element of a nation’s ability to utilize sea power was identified as a function of its type of government. The free enterprise and initiative of the American economy should match this boundary condition of maritime pre-eminence should the trends of self-interest so dictate. The technology of the sea bed has already derived much from this aspect of the society and current effort in industry points to many further contributions in this regard.
This brief review of the elements of sea power is indicative of the potential of the United States for its exploitation should the national economic interest demand, should international political or military developments force the issue, or should a significant evolutionary cycle in the use of the sea impend. This last possibility is inherent in any extensive or massive exploitation of the sea bottom. Its imminence may be assessed by a review of the basic evolutionary cycle in the expansion of sea power, and an assessment of the phase in the evolutionary process with which we are today confronted.
The briefest outline of history would not fail to encompass the era of the river society, the development of oared craft capable of navigating the Aegean Sea and the Nile Delta, the development of sail, the development of hull and structure of ocean transport, the introduction of steam, the introduction of the steel hull, and the introduction of nuclear propulsion. The student of history will not fail to recognize that each of these developments changed the basic logistics of the use of the sea and as a consequence, the scale of the land-water mass over which control could be exerted; nor will the student of history fail to recognize that each of these developments played a vital role in the final resolution of a. cycle of national or international land conflict. Indeed, a broad evolutionary pattern of societal development can be recognized which has at least five distinct phases. The identification of these phases is central to an estimate of the effect of the development of the sea bed.
The initial phase of an evolutionary cycle in a society is characterized by a level of maritime technology which provides for some land mass, a natural means for defense, for commerce, for water supply and a means of waste disposal to the extent that a segment of the population can be freed from employment in the economic necessities of providing food, clothing, shelter, and military defense.
The second phase of the evolutionary cycle is characterized by the development of a priesthood or in more recent times, a scientific society interested in the acquisition of philosophy or knowledge for satisfaction of national cultural aspirations.
The third phase of the evolutionary cycle is characterized by the transition of the knowledge acquired by the scientific class into engineering arts which are applied to the construction of land-oriented logistic systems such as roads, aqueducts, warehouses, granaries, and sewage systems.
The fourth phase of the evolutionary cycle is characterized by the invasion of the society along the land logistic systems by predators or barbarians who were otherwise denied access by means of the natural defenses provided by the land-water configuration. This phase continues until the land logistic systems are completely fractionated and the logistics of the conflict are forced to rely again on the sea.
The fifth phase which is essential to the evolutionary step (indeed, the first four phases can repeat themselves for a number of cycles) occurs when the engineering arts acquired in the construction of land systems and in the subsequent design of engines of defense are applied to the maritime and naval arts and a new level of maritime capability is achieved. At this juncture in history, the society will stabilize about some larger scale configuration of the land and water mass and a new evolutionary cycle will commence.
Historical evidence supports this pattern. The earliest known societies were lake communities such as the Neolithic villages uncovered in the Swiss lakes and similar remains in Scotland and Ireland. These lake people repaired to the lake islands for defense, while enjoying the collateral benefits of transportation, water supply, and waste disposal provided by the body of water. That these societies were not the forerunner of modern civilization is probably explained by the lack of geologic connectivity between the lakes and the world’s major rivers; i.e., lakes are in general connected with the non-navigable headwaters of major rivers or constitute the major basin of a quite localized watershed. The honor of the birthplace of civilization, therefore, goes to the rivers.
It is of importance to the thesis to note that the first river societies did not begin along the banks of rivers in arbitrary fashion, but began along rivers whose peculiar configuration provided a natural means of defense. Thus societies flourished between the protective rivers of the Tigris and the Euphrates in the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze and Huang Ho in China or between the protective sands of the deserts along the Nile. By virtue of their proximity to the Aegean Sea, the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Sumerian societies were destined to be the source from which sprang the next major societal development. In Babylon, Sumeria, and Egypt, societies waxed and waned in the cycle of priests, pyramids, hanging gardens, artisans, roads, canals, granaries and the destruction thereof by barbarians until, as the evidence seems to indicate, the oared craft of the Egyptian delta were able to make their way to Crete and the technology of Babylon was transported across the mountains to Turkey, to the Western Mediterranean, and to the Aegean Sea. At this level of sea power, the great Hellenic chapter of society began.
The science which flourished in the sea- protected Greek culture was transmuted to the engineering of the Roman Empire with the gentle transition of maritime technology from the Aegean Sea to the Mediterranean. The constraints of sea power dictated that Rome should dominate the Mediterranean and as long as the control of the sea was the deciding factor in attacks against this realm, as it was in the three Punic Wars, this empire dominated the civilized world. It was the great engineering feats which extended roads, aqueducts, forts, and logistic installations into Northern Europe that provided the means for the wagons of the Goths and Visigoths to destroy the Empire. There followed a period of almost 1,000 years of land conflict resolved by the advent of the knight and the castle, but equally so by the development of a maritime technology which enabled commerce and defense to stabilize around the entire perimeter of Europe.
Three major societal elements contributed to this new scale in the use of the sea, the ships of Portugal and Spain, the rising influence of Britain as a maritime power and the establishment of the Hanseatic League. The stability provided to Europe by the Hanse permitted the onset of the new evolutionary cycle in the form of the Renaissance which characteristically was initially religious, artistic, and scientific in nature and was to precede the flowering of the engineering arts in the 17th and 18th centuries. So it was at the beginning of the 19th century when Napoleon set out to conquer the European continent, the land logistical systems were at a technological peak. One can now easily see the pattern by which the land logistic system was destroyed with Napoleon’s advance into Spain, and the resolution of that phase of the conflict by naval victory at Trafalgar, how it was further destroyed in the advance to and retreat from Moscow and finally resolved by sea-supported victory at Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the same pattern was repeated in the United States when a great Civil War was fought whose resolution did not depend on the outcome of individual battles, but on the control by the North of the sea lanes. This fact became increasingly apparent to the South as its land logistics system was progressively destroyed and finally extinguished at Amelia Courthouse.
At this point in history, the introduction of steam marked the beginning of the next evolutionary cycle which changed the scale of sea power influence from European to Atlantic waters. The science of the late 19th century matured into the engineering of the early 20th which flourished until World War I laid waste the resources of France and Germany in a shattering land conflict. This conflict was ultimately resolved by the United States and Great Britain through sea-borne logistics. In the armistice period between 1918 and 1939, the fruits of engineering were realized in the form of air power while contemporaneously, a new science and a new physics emerged from the works of Heisenberg and Planck. World War II produced the ultimate in the destruction of the industrial fabric of Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan until the war was brought to a conclusion by the sea-borne invasion of the Normandy beaches and the isolation and destruction of the logistic support of the Japanese Islands by Pacific naval power.
The finale to that conflict provided the ominous warning that the next evolutionary cycle might be more compressed and that the engineering fruits of the new science, nuclear physics, could speed the development of land logistic systems and, concomitantly, the means for their destruction. At the same time, nuclear power provided the mechanism for a new scale in the use of sea power and thereby the basis for a new evolutionary cycle.
It is of central importance to note that of all the benefits which this new source of power confers on marine technology, the greatest is the ability to operate continuously within the sea, impervious to radioactivity and highly resistant to the overpressures of nuclear attack.
To a large extent this element of the new sea power has been realized in the Fleet Ballistic Missile System and in the nuclear attack submarines. The existence of nuclear power itself is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to ensure that the sea bottom will play a significant part in this new episode of the sea. Other technologies must also be developed or have already been developed to make this domain more attractive or more competitive for control of the full dimension of the ocean. It is a part of this thesis that such technologies are already with us or are in the offing and their realization will not require a greater expenditure of resource than has been required in the development of military air power and certainly less than is required for the conquest of space.
Two major technologies which complement nuclear power must prove both feasible and economic before the sea bottom becomes of strategic or commercial importance. These are the technology of manned vehicles which are capable of operating at considerable depth and in close proximity to the bottom, and the technology of the physiology of man which will permit him to operate as a free swimmer in the environment at depths at least as great as those encompassed by the world’s continental shelves. The evidence now accumulating indicates that both of these technologies will be feasible at reasonable cost and with acceptable hazard.
The first self-powered vehicle to demonstrate the ability to carry man to the deepest part of the ocean was the bathyscaph, Trieste. This vehicle designed by the Swiss scientist, Auguste Piccard, was piloted by Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Donald Walsh, U. S. Navy, to the deepest part of the Marianas Trench in 1960. In 1963 and 1964, the Trieste was called upon by the U. S. Navy to assist in the search for the USS Thresher (SSN- 593). Piloted by Lieutenant Commander Donald Keach and Lieutenant George Martin during the first phase, and by Lieutenant Commander Bradford Mooney and Lieutenants Lawrence Shumaker and John Howland in the second phase, the Trieste was able to locate and to photograph substantial portions of the Thresher's, hull. The difficulties experienced in this mission have created the impression that Trieste-type craft are inherently unwieldy for undersea engineering operations. This is an erroneous view. In her original concept, the Trieste was designed for oceanographic observation and as such consisted basically of a pressure hull which was negatively buoyant and a gasoline-filled float of sufficient size to provide the necessary reserve buoyancy. The extremely limited budget and time scale associated with her original construction and her subsequent modification into the Trieste II precluded the introduction of anything but the barest elements of power and control. She was not, therefore, designed for the missions she was called upon to perform. It is a fact that the kindliness of the undersea for the mobility of large objects is such that a Trieste-type vehicle, if equipped with adequate power, appropriate sensors and integrated controls, could effectively perform many engineering missions in the sea. Indeed, the capability of this type of craft to support large payloads would appear to make them valuable for use in the commercial recovery of the contents of the sea bed.
There is a safety hazard, however, in the use of aviation gasoline for buoyancy, which has probably inhibited the commercial use of vehicles like Trieste and her French counterpart, the Archimède. This hazard severely limits the sea state in which these craft can successfully operate with surface support. This limitation is, however, only temporary, for the development of buoyancy materials such as the syntactic foams will permit the substitution of safer, rigid, and lighter materials. The syntactic foams are mixtures of small glass spheres in an epoxy resin. The glass spheres provide both the necessary strength to resist the pressures of the deepest part of the ocean and at the same time the requisite buoyancy; the resin holds the spheres together. As will be further indicated, glass is an ideal material for deep submergence application and in this first manifestation it holds the key to the continued use of the bathyscaph concept. When these materials become commercially available, it will be possible to construct deep ocean vehicles at modest cost (less than that of aircraft).
With low cost, very deep submergence vehicles of the bathyscaph type may become commonplace, but their large size and limited power prevent them from being high performance vehicles in the military sense. This deficiency is being alleviated by two other classes of vehicles which are now demonstrating a capability for operations on or near the ocean bottom. For each of these classes, however, the depths which have been obtained are, by bathyscaph standards, relatively modest. These two classes are similar in that they both rely on reserve buoyancy within the manned pressure hull to provide the requisite safety, but are distinguishable in that they derive from different structural and fabrication concepts.
In the first class are those ships which are derivatives of the conventional ring-stiffened submarine hull. The depth capability is, in general, obtained by the use of stronger materials. Provision for near-bottom capability is made by some combination of ballast control and thrust devices. The first of such vehicles to be developed is the Aluminaut, whose conceptual design was made by Dr. Edward Wenk while at the David Taylor Model Basin. The Aluminaut consists of ring- stiffened cylinders of aluminum which are bolted together. Forged aluminum hemispherical heads are employed for the end closures. Although the design depth of 15,000 feet has not been achieved at this writing, the capability to operate near the bottom in depths up to 6,000 feet and for extended periods of time has been demonstrated. The second craft of this type is the Auguste Piccard designed by Jacques Piccard. This submersible is constructed of high strength steel and has an operating depth of about 2,000 feet. She has been operating in Lake Geneva, carrying 40 tourists to the maximum depth in the lake of about 1,000 feet. Relatively few vehicles of this type have been built or are now planned, but progress must continue in this direction if high performance vehicles with long staying power and modest crew or passenger capability are required.
Such a projection is being made by the Navy in its construction of the nuclear- powered, ocean-engineering submersible, the NR-1. This ship will have a near-bottom capability and will be built for the maximum practicable depth which can be safely assured within current technology. Initiated without fanfare, this submersible may be the most significant innovation in the technology of the sea bottom. With the ability to free herself from surface support, the NR-1 should be the pioneering prototype of the sea bottom vehicles which have all the requisities to revolutionize our concepts of the utilization of the sea.
In the second class of vehicle are those which are derivative of the precisely machined and precision-controlled, welded pressure hull. The vehicles, in general, have a positively buoyant spherical pressure capsule made of very high strength material. Being limited in size they are generally capable of supporting crews of not more than two or three. Notable vehicles in this configuration are the Alvin of the U. S. Navy and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; the Deepstar of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the Westing- house Electric Corporation; the Moray of the Navy’s Naval Ordnance Test Station; the Deep Quest of the Lockheed Corporation; and the Asherah of the Electric Boat Company.
The forerunner of these vehicles is the diving saucer, the Soucoupe, built by Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau of France and employed by him in ocean exploration in the Red Sea, and subsequently off the West Coast of the United States in the Scripps Canyon. This vehicle is capable of depths of up to 1,000 feet, and the pressure hull is built of fairly conventional steel. The Alvin hull is built of high strength steel and has demonstrated a capability to operate at a depth of 6,000 feet. Except for the Moray, which has a pressure hull of aluminum, all of the above vehicles are made of some form of high strength steel either quenched and tempered, or of a relatively new type maraging steel. All require surface support and use some form of battery power. Mission durations are, therefore, measured in hours. With the exception of the Moray, all are of relatively slow speed with maximums of about five knots. If, however, the speed were not limited by power considerations, it would be limited by visibility, the necessity for obstacle avoidance, or by the characteristics of other sensors. The Moray, which is not designed for near-bottom operation, has a considerably higher speed, albeit for shorter periods of time.
In the immediate future, this type of vehicle will be expanded in capability in the U. S. Navy’s Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle. In her preliminary design configuration, the DSRV uses three high strength steel spheres joined by cylindrical connections. The forward sphere is employed for the vehicle controls and the pilot and copilot; the after sphere will carry up to 14 passengers, and the center sphere is an access to a surface hatch and to a mating bell for attachment to a mother submarine. This latter feature makes the vehicle unique in her freedom from surface support and in her all-weather capability. When employed with a nuclear submarine as a mother craft, the combination permits continuous submerged operation for extended periods with a semicontinuous extension through the small vehicle to all of the sea bottom encompassed by the continental shelves. In a slightly longer time scale, the Navy is also developing a deep ocean 20,000- foot search submersible which will also be capable of mating with a conventional military submarine, providing a full ocean search and light work capability.
In the longer range, it can be anticipated that the two types of true submersibles will approach each other in concept. In order to attain greater depths, the ring-stiffened cylinder-type vehicles will have to employ increasingly sophisticated fabrication techniques and will have to employ more brittle materials such as the higher strength steels, titanium, or aluminum. The small, spherical-hull-configured vehicles, in order to increase the pay- load, will be forced to evolve away from the structurally advantageous but volume-restraining spheres into ellipsoids or prolate spheroids, and will also require the use of higher strength materials and increasingly sophisticated fabrication techniques.
If the trends herein outlined are projected forward, a variety of vehicle configurations will be possible for an extended range of ocean missions from search and oceanographic observation through numerous manipulative tasks, including large object recovery. However, the development path so far projected points, to increasingly sophisticated and consequently increasingly costly vehicles, and the author’s prognostication of an extensive commercial and military intrusion into the deep ocean would be rash indeed. Fortunately, a bright prospect in the offing is in the use of massive structural glass or ceramic materials. These materials augur a drastic change in the economics and technology of the deep ocean and the ocean bed. In a series of definitive studies, H. L. Perry, of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory has demonstrated that sizable pressure hulls can be constructed of massive glass; that these structures are extremely light in weight; that they can resist the pressures of the deepest ocean without serious compromise of payload; that they can be adequately protected from shock on the surface; that their resistance to shock increases dramatically with depth; that the problems of creep and fatigue are minimal; that they can be inspected for flaws non-destructively during and after fabrication and during operation; that they can be protected against sympathetic implosion; and that in quantity production, the pressure hull will be a minor cost of the vehicle. These superior qualities of glass as the hull material for deep submergence have already been demonstrated in its use as the major constituent of the previously mentioned syntactic foams and as the essential element in deep ocean, unmanned oceanographic instruments such as a corer which can collect samples in the deepest part of the ocean. A number of vehicles now on the drawing boards project the use of large glass spheres for additional buoyancy, and several of the glass companies are capable of producing glass spheres of sufficient size to carry a man. It is only a matter of time before a manned glass deep submersible becomes a reality.
The enthusiasm with which many naval architects approach the future of deep ocean submersibles is conditioned by the fact that until this year all of the deep ocean vehicles herein described, and all of the material developments which permit optimistic projection, were accomplished with extremely modest budgets and in the absence of any major, focused national effort. With such a focus, a wide spectrum of vehicles could be obtained ranging from low cost, one-man, glider-type vehicles capable of using the full ocean depth on each glide path, to large nuclear-powered, mother submersibles capable of tending and supporting numbers of fuel cell or battery-powered vectorable craft analogous to the carrier aircraft systems of the surface Navy.
Vehicles are, however, but one extension of man into the sea. The second major technological development which will open the sea floor is in the adaptation of the physiology of man to permit him to exist as a free swimmer in the ocean. The major innovation here was the introduction of the concept of saturation diving by Captains George Bond, Walter Mazzone, and Robert Workman while stationed at the New London Naval Medical Research Laboratory. The initial project, a series of chamber experiments appropriately entitled “Genesis,” demonstrated the ability of animals and of man to exist for prolonged periods at high pressures breathing appropriate mixtures of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen. Such adaptation to the environment imposes the limitation that man cannot make excursions into shallower water or return to atmospheric pressure without long and carefully controlled decompressions.
This limitation is more than compensated by the increased ability to make deep excursions and by the extensive work periods available at the saturation depth. The initial Genesis project matured into the Sea Lab I and Sea Lab II open sea experiments which were conducted in depths of approximately 200 feet. The first was conducted off the Argus Island near Bermuda and was primarily to determine operational feasibility. Four men remained for a period of nine days in the Sea Lab and were carefully monitored during and after the experiment for evidence of significant physiological effects. The success of the experiment gave impetus to the Sea Lab II venture which was conducted at the mouth of the Scripps Canyon off La Jolla, California. This second, more extensive experiment used three teams of aquanauts, each of which spent approximately 15 days in the Laboratory. Commander Scott Carpenter was the team leader for the first and second teams, and lived under pressure for 30 days at a continuous stretch; Lieutenant Robert Sonnenberg was the medical doctor in the laboratory for the first and third teams and, as a consequence, was pressurized for 30 days in two discreet 15-day periods. This experiment included a great many measures of performance capabilities, work and salvage abilities, and evaluation of diver equipments as well as more extensive physiological and psychological measures than had been obtainable in Sea Lab I. The initial results of this experiment are highly optimistic in their indication of man’s ability to operate effectively as a saturated diver at these modest depths and in their indication of the ability to project to considerably deeper operations in forthcoming experiments. These are designed to achieve, initially, an operational capability for man at 600 feet and, eventually, a capability to operate at 1,000 feet. A parallel series of experiments is being conducted by Jacques-Yves Cousteau in France, and by Edwin Link of Ocean Systems Incorporated in the United States. Both of these investigators have conducted operations at deeper depths than those of the U. S. Navy Sea Lab, but with fewer subjects and with less extensive experimental measures. Commercial operations with saturated divers have already been undertaken by Marine Contracting, Inc., of Southport, Connecticut, at the Smith Mountain Dam in Virginia. The economic value of this operation is such that it is certain to extend to many commercial diving tasks now accomplished by more conventional diving techniques.
It may be too early to assess the optimism which may be legitimately employed in projecting this capability to the future, except to note three potential areas for extension of man’s capability in the sea. The first results from the indication that it may be possible for man to make considerably deeper excursion dives from the depth for which he is saturated than he may make from the surface. That is, from the surface a short time excursion dive to a depth of 200 feet appears to be close to the maximum that can be safely tolerated; from a saturated depth of 200 feet, an excursion to 400 feet appears to be more easily tolerated and excursions to 500 feet may be possible. At a depth of 600 feet even greater excursions may be permitted. If this present indication (and it is only an indication) is correct, man’s capability to perform useful tasks as a free swimmer on the continental shelf may be greatly accelerated. The second potential is covered in the gas mixtures which are employed by divers at deep submergence. At present, mixtures of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen are employed, such that the appropriate partial pressures of oxygen and nitrogen are maintained. Helium is chosen because it is both inert and light, but even helium is a heavy gas at ambient pressures of 600 feet or greater. The possibility of using a hydrogen gas mixture at these advanced depths appears initially attractive as a result of a very limited number of animal studies. The extent to which hydrogen enters into human metabolic processes raises certain notes of caution, but should this gas prove physiologically inert, man’s extension into the sea will be again eased. The third possibility belongs to a distant, but foreseeable future and envisions the use of an appropriate fluid which fills the lungs, but contains and is resupplied with sufficient quantities of dissolved oxygen to sustain life. The ability of mammals to exist with such fluids in their lungs has already been proven, but the total set of physiological problems, to say nothing of the reacclimatization problems thereby raised, should keep investigators busy for at least a decade before any attempt to so condition man can be attempted. Should this possibility materialize, the depth potential for man as a free swimmer will extend to substantial portions of the ocean.
As in the case of vehicles, the enthusiasm with which the diving fraternity and the medical fraternity approach the future of man-in-the-sea, is conditioned by the fact that all of the accomplishments to date have been accomplished with modest or marginal application of development resource. The exponential effect of accomplishment, economics, and national interest should in short order eliminate this constraint. The pace of development should then be limited only by the time required to train the necessary specialists in the field.
The forecast of the technology of the sea, based on these modestly funded but impressive beginnings, can thus be summarized in terms of the technology of vehicles and of man as a function of the depth of operation. For the greater portion of the continental shelf (0 to 3,000 feet) the economic use of man and machines for extensive and prolonged engineering operations is virtually assured within the next decade. The magnitude of national effort devoted to this technology is still contingent upon the assessment of the military significance of the continental shelf, and the assessment of its resources and of its scenic and recreational potential. For the next geographic areas of interest, the ocean ridges and sea mounts (6,000 to 8,000 feet), the capability to deploy vehicles and to mount installations is virtually assured within the next decade. In the next two decades, the commercial deployment of vehicles and machines in these areas is highly probable; and by the end of the century, the economic use of men and machines in these areas is not inconceivable. The magnitude of national effort in these areas is again contingent upon an as yet unassessed military, economic, and cultural potential. For the final areas of interest, the broad ocean basins (12,000 to 20,000 feet), within the next decade, the capability to visit selected areas of the bottom and to perform scientific and light engineering missions is virtually assured; within the next two decades, the deployment of vehicles and machines in these areas is highly likely; and by the end of the century, the extensive economic deployment of a wide class of commercial and military vehicles is a distinct possibility.
The acceptance of this forecast permits an assessment of the effect of the technology on the bottom on the fundamental constraints of sea power and the laws of the sea that derive therefrom. Of the three fundamental constraints earlier enumerated: the law of the sea, the speed of transit, and the geopolitical, geologistical and relationship between land and sea mass, two may be drastically altered. The first of these is the law of the sea. It is already established that emoluments of sovereignty or ownership already obtain in the sea bed. The relatively recently ratified Treaty of the Continental Shelf confers sovereign rights to the continental shelf out to a depth of 200 meters, or to the depth of practicable exploitation, to those nations having borders on the sea. Granting the technology which has been forecast here and using the latter of these definitions, it is clear that the ability to exert sovereign rights in the entire sea bed has already received tacit approval.
The next question which will certainly be raised with respect to the law of the sea, is the extent to which these sovereign rights in the sea bed confers additional rights in the waters immediately above the sea bed, the waters well above the sea bed, and the free surface above the sea bed. Certainly some rights akin to those which have delineated the legal rights on land from those in the air will develop. If an exact analogy were drawn, (though it probably will not be) the right to transit over that portion of the sea bed whose sovereignty has been established would be the prerogative of the sovereign and the cherished freedom of the sea would thereby be abolished. While this extreme limit may not be reached, the right to regulate the jettison of material over occupied areas of the sea bed, the right to regulate traffic above and around occupied areas of the sea bed, and the right to discriminate between peaceable and belligerent transit over occupied areas of the sea bed may well result as emoluments of sovereignty. The establishment of boundary lines, particularly along elements of the bottom which define major geographic entities across which commercial and military passage will be regulated, is not a far-fetched extension of the trend of law and technology.
The second constraint on sea power, speed of transit, will not be markedly affected by the occupation and utilization of the sea bottom. In fact, the limited capability of either optical or acoustic sensors will limit speeds of advance on or near the bottom to, at most, ten knots. It should be noted, however, that from a military-political standpoint, this constraint becomes an advantage particularly in the development of military systems having a potential for arms controllability. In such instance, a near-bottom capability would permit deployment, covertly or overtly, at the option of the deployer and at the same time to permit credible deployment within or out of range of the threatened protagonist in accordance with the level of political or military crisis.
The third constraint on sea power, the geopolitical, geologistical relationship between sea and land mass, will be on the other hand, completely altered. This drastic change is best appreciated if each of Mahan’s basic laws of the sea is reviewed against the projected law of the sea bottom and future technology of the ocean. The first of these principles relates the ability to use sea power to the topological relationship between land and water masses. If, now, sovereignty over the bottom is established to a depth of 3,000 feet and the accompanying technology developed, then the British Isles, Cuba, and the other Caribbean Islands will lose their status as islands. The Soviet Union and the United States will have a common border no longer separated by the Bering Strait. The entire make up of the complex of islands and continents which constitute the Southeast Asian island of Sumatra, Borneo, Australia and New Guinea will be completely altered in appearance forming a vast new domain of contiguous sovereign territories. If sovereignty is further established to a depth of 10,000 feet and the accompanying technology develops then the Atlantic Ocean will be cleaved by a great ridge in the Northern and Southern hemispheres which divides it into an eastern and western basin. In the Pacific, the extensive chains of sea mounts divide the Pacific Ocean into a significant number of basins which are now identifiable by the sea mounts which constitute Wake, Guam, the New Hebrides, the Fijis, the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Ryukyus, the Kuriles, etc. Even now, these islands are important elements in the strategic outer periphery of the Asian land mass. The occupation and utilization of the undersea portion of these strategic barriers will make even more effective the utilization of the outer islands as a commercial, political, and military balance to the mainland.
If, ultimately, sovereignty is established to the full depths of the ocean, effectively 20,000 feet, then there exists the complex and politically hazardous international task of dividing a territory more than three times as large as that of the present land mass and the establishment of appropriate international relationships which will still admit of the control, management, and utilization of the mineral, animal, and plant rights which are contained therein.
The second of Mahan’s principles relates to the conformation of the coastline and its capacity for harbors. Here again the technology of the sea bottom will have a drastic effect. The purpose of a harbor is to provide calm waters to permit the transfer of cargoes across the land-sea interface. The provision of calm water is equally well obtained by going beneath the surface to a significant depth. Offshore platforms for the transfer of oil are already commonplace; offshore submerged transfer points for bulk cargoes have not as yet even been envisaged. Nevertheless their development would change the effective nature of the coastline, transforming California, for example, from a coastal state with limited harbors to a continuous quay for the transfer of goods and products in transpacific commerce.
The third element of the nation’s ability to use the sea is found in the number of people in the vicinity of the sea coast having an understanding in the technology and competence of the sea. The technology of the sea bottom has a curious quality. It must employ not only the technology normally associated with naval architecture and marine engineering, but in addition must employ technologies of the type developed for space, for space medicine, and in medical physiology- The development of sea bed capabilities will alter the balance of national capabilities with respect to technological capabilities. Thus, the paucity of commercial ship construction in the United States because of severe foreign competition is more than compensated for by the extensive aerospace industry, the defense industry and the advanced capabilities in medicine. This spectrum of technology should prove fortunate for the United States and if properly employed could re-establish U. S. supremacy in the commercial exploitation of the seas.
The fourth element of a nation’s ability to use the sea, the character of the people and its government, is probably unaltered by the development of a deep ocean technology. The initiative of the U. S. system of free enterprise has already played a significant role in the developing capability. It is gratifying to note that the vast majority of the deep ocean vehicles described herein were developed by private industry with its own funds and that the Navy’s Man-In-The-Sea Program is paralleled by ambitious development under private initiative.
The ingredients for an evolutionary step in the use of the sea are present and at the outset are favorable to the United States. With vigor and skill and constant preparedness there is every hope that a nuclear conflict, which would most assuredly fractionate civilization’s most recent and proudest age of land logistics, can and will be averted. Should it occur, the final resolution of the conflict would most surely devolve on the ships which ply the nondestructible highways of the sea and on sea-based military elements which by virtue of the ocean environment are least vulnerable to the effects of nuclear weapons. To continue to prevent its occurrence, the manifestation of this sea-based capability must ever be present as even now it is present in the form of our tactical Fleets and Polaris deterrent. With vigor and skill and resolve, the technology of the ocean bottom can and will be advanced. In this advance, the United States must be in the forefront so that when the inevitable and Gordian problems of sovereignty on the ocean floor are raised at the international conference table, the ability to resolve them on terms favorable to international peace and stability is matched by the capability for enforcement.
The thesis is here complete. History, law, technology, and the principles of sea power have been parochially invoked to state the case for “Inner Space.” The test of time, or even more quickly the test of analysis may demonstrate the hypothesis faulty and the assumptions rashly made.
The challenge of the deep ocean may not be the most important international problem of the last half of this century; but it may.