In a recent issue of Science and Securities, Harris Upham & Co. used the term "inner space exploration" to describe the nation's efforts in two vital fields—oceanography and the Navy's antisubmarine warfare.

"Inner space" has great military value, considering the 400 submarines in the Russian fleet. That's why the Navy has planned a ten-year program costing more than $900 million to multiply its efforts in oceanographic research. The Navy plan was said to be prompted by intelligence reports that the Soviet oceanographic work was at least three or four times as large in scope as the equivalent operation of the United States.

Rear Admiral E. C. Stephan, the Navy's hydrographer, reported that his office was interested principally in obtaining new data on the shape and nature of the ocean, the currents in strategic areas around the world, the Arctic and Antarctic, and in transforming these into charts to be used by navigators.

"It is not enough," says Admiral Stephan, "to just know the shape of the bottom. We have to know the chemical and physical properties of the ocean because modern weapons systems, modern submarines, require this much greater detail of knowledge."

The enlarged oceanographic research in the next ten years is expected to mean a giant stride forward. "It is possible, for example," said Harris Upham analysts in their study of the inner space, "that advanced sonar systems will help a future sea captain of a submerged vessel 'see' better underwater than he could from the bridge of a ship tossed by the waves."

Briefly, antisubmarine warfare (ASW) is the job of electronically detecting, tracking and classifying submarines. Important factors in the field include Raytheon Co., Aerojet-General Corp., Loral Electronics Corp., Avien, Inc., and Edo Corp.

Tom G. Thompson of The Shield Survey (May 23, 1961) liked Edo as a specialist in sea science, which he believed should have "growth ahead in the Polaris submarine program, in undersea defense and in oceanographic research." H. Hentz & Co. called Edo "pre-eminent as manufacturer of sonar equipment in the field of antisubmarine warfare" in the past twelve years in its March 1961 study of the company. L. F. Rothschild & Co. termed Edo "riding pleasantly astride the submarine and ASW programs" in its study of the same month.

Avien was seen by Stuart H. Clement, Jr., of Joseph Walker & Sons in his February 1961 study as "coming of age." "Of particular interest for Avien's future," said the Joseph Walker analyst, "is a completely new underwater propulsion system to meet the propulsion needs in this rapidly expanding field. . . . Avien is also at work," continued Mr. Clement, "to integrate this propulsion system into underwater vehicles (including its own hull designs) and is developing detection systems for such vehicles."

Loral is also important in antisubmarine warfare in addition to, in the words of Edwin D. Pawling of Ira Haupt & Co. in his April 1961 study, "a high degree of proficiency in many areas of technical activities." It is a specialist in acoustic detection techniques.

Raytheon has devoted a new industrial center completely to ASW, while Aerojet-General is working on a high-speed torpedo of radical design. Cohn Electronic is another acknowledged leader in the field of electro-acoustics and underwater sonar and detection programs.
 
Deserving particular mention is Edgerton, Germehausen & Grier, which has evolved a sonar system which when coupled with underwater cameras enables them to be placed accurately without touching the ocean floor.

EG & G's interests include many pioneering programs of tremendous importance. Among them: oceanographic research and underwater photography; Project Plowshare, the use of nuclear explosions for peacetime purposes; and Project Rover, the development of nuclear rocket engines for space exploration.

Harris Upham analysts saw potential economic benefits "staggering" in scope from the exploration of the depths, including the fish, offshore oil fields and strategic minerals. According to John N. Wilford of The Wall Street Journal, scientists search oceans for new drugs, chemicals and clues to human cell behavior.

"The sea," said Mr. Wilford, "already supplies vitamins and minerals. Iodine, for example, comes from seaweed; milk of magnesia is made from magnesium extracted from sea water. Cod liver oil and oil from the soup-fin shark are common sources of vitamins. But the sea holds a treasure of other chemicals; as drug sleuths find it tougher to dig up new sources on land, their interest is being drawn to the sea."

Countless exploration possibilities in the depth of the waves have been opening up by the advanced techniques in charting the ocean floor which itself was made possible by the development of a method of calculating the water depth by measuring the time it takes for sound to be sent to the ocean floor and return to the surface.

Of immediately prime national concern, however, is the military threat posed by the advent of a Soviet nuclear-powered, missile-firing submarine fleet which can remain hidden indefinitely to launch its missiles from beneath the sea at any point within millions of square miles of ocean. It will open a new ocean—the Arctic—to a potential enemy and expose the North American continent to possible close-range assault.

The impressive capacities of the Navy's Polaris serve as a reminder of the reality of this great potential danger from the sea, which represents a strategic threat of an entirely new order of magnitude.

Indicative of this trend is the Navy's intensive, though as yet quiet, study of antisubmarine warfare that may eventually result in the establishment of a global ocean surveillance system.

The antisubmarine survey contemplates some grandiose measures to counter the Soviet threat. The problem involves not only detection but identification and then destruction.

An ocean surveillance system would establish and integrate all detection media, including sonar or sound detection, radar, infrared, visual and other means. It would require an immense setup for data collection and evaluation. It would also require the development of a whole range of detection and identification devices and of new antisubmarine weapons.

There is every likelihood that this area of defense will be one receiving the largest percentage increase in funding from future defense budgets. Indicative of this trend is the quiet but substantial rise in the Navy's expenditures on its Sonobuoy's submarine detection systems and equipment. Magnavox's backlog of military orders, for instance, was raised late in 1961 to $115 million from $86 million in June of the same year, with antisubmarine business accounting for $50 million.

The strategic handwriting is plainly on the wall. Investors should do well to cash in on new profit opportunities in this growing field.

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