| Show Soldiering The Salt Lake Tribune Siiaday September 4 19S8 117 Through Bad Rapport With the Press Navy Cuts Its Own Throat I have gotten letters recently ask- ing why the press has been so hostile to the Navy over the incident of the Vincennes Not all of the media has been hostile of course: One tends to remember only those stories that have been hostile Still there are reasons which may be of interest Almost all breaking news about Fred Reed ally sure that nothing will happen without nagging for example They promise to do security reviews on submarine stories by a certain date and then don't forcing the reporter to miss deadlines It's just a shoddy organization Now reporters are approximately human In principle rudeness and inefficiency should not color a story In practice they do The Navy has a bunker mentality This means that when something embarrassing happens the Navy simply refuses requests for interviews The attitude embodied in this is just a trifle arrogant As an officer in their PAO shop told me (i e this Is official Navy policy) the Navy isn’t going to tell the public anything it finds em- barrassing For example I recently asked for an interview about the new improved class deAegis radar for the DDG-5stroyers The new radar if my information is correct is lighter cheaper smaller more reliable and sits on 1 fewer circuit boards Given the criti cism of services for allegedly buying increasingly expensive and unreliable systems a countertrend in a major weapons system is heartening Ii is also a major if somewhat obscure story The Navy declined the request saying the difference in radars didn't warrant an interview If the pattern holds this means some captains — and naval captains have the political sophistication of cocker spaniels — didn't want to be bothered Trying to help the Navy from com- - mitting journalistic suicide — my job is to get both sides of the story if I can — 1 told the PAO shop recently that I had been assigned a story on the Aegis radar That is The Navy's PAO shop showed barely any interest even when I explained that if they didn't respond they would make the Navy look pretty bad The essential fact is that the PAOs don't get into trouble by doing nothing and they can always blame the results on the malignancy of the press And of course their superior never learn how badly the Navy is being represented That’s why the Navy gets hostile press n I was to ask the critics for their views and follow them with the Navy’s rebuttal In doing this I was setting the critics up to cut their own throats: They make technically absurd charges and would have been creamed by an articulate naval officer Fine with me: my job is not to protect purveyors of nonsense 4 Universal P'ess Syndicate the military comes from the public affairs offices (PAO) of the three services in the Pentagon These outfits have distinct personalities and philosophies The Army which is the best of the active-dut- y services is thoughtful friendly argues its case when criticized and reminds me of a big eager puppy The Air Force is friendly efficient and never volunteers The Navy is surly combative inefficient and unhelpful Why I don’t know but the pattern has held for years If you put in a request for a routine interview you can be virtu- - Device May Aid Oilmen and Archaeologists WASHINGTON (UPI) — What do dinosaur bones and hazardous wastes have in common? Both are now being hunted down with a new device that uses sound waves to locate buried booty Although oil companies have for many years been using acoustic techniques in their search for petroleum deposits scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee say their new system is much more sensitive capable of imaging underground features as small as 1 foot across The sounding device known technically as a geophysical diffraction tomography device or GDT will get its first shot at protecting the environment this fall at an Army site known to contain buried hazardous wastes “It should be helpful in remedying situations in which you know a site has a problem but you have to find all the waste you want to exhume" said Alan Witten the Oak Ridge engineer who developed GDT In trials at Oak Ridge last year researchers were successful at imaging buried drums and showing whether they were empty or filled with water Witten said the Environmental Protection Agency is also interested in using the sounding device to check for underground leaks from storage tanks “We can detect regions of elevated moisture content" Witten explained because when moisture rather than air fills the pores of soil it makes the patch of earth denser than surrounding areas The GDT system uses a line of microphones placed in strategically dug holes to measure changes in sound waves as they travel through the ground from a “seismic gun" which generates the waves at the surface A computer analyzes the data from the sounding and creates pictures revealing the size and location of buried objects such as fossilized bones or barrels of waste "Because a sound is a wave we know if it passes through homogeneous material there should be no changes and the waves would be received undisturbed Any inhomogeneities in the soil wiii distort the wave" Witten said "We use the distortions in the sound waves to con- BOTH BUY-IT-WHOLESA- LE WAREHOUSES ARE OUT OF BUSINESS STARTS TODAY! ADDITIONAL DEEPER - DISCOUNTS ON ENTIRE NOTHING INVENTORY HELD BACK EVERY ITEM IN BOTH GIANT — THE ENTIRE 4 MILLION DOLLAR INVENTORY MUST BE LIQUIDATED IMMEDIATELY WAREHOUSES AT LEAST 20 OFF ALREADY LOW LOW PRICES! ENTIRE INVENTORY DISCOUNTED ADDITIONAL 20 OFF PRICES! struct our images" Since it is impossible to use a dethat rotates beneath buried features Witten's system obtains different “viewing perspectives" by moving the sound source along the ground surface Using that techn nique GDT can examine a of ground 15 feet deep by 40 feet long in 90 minutes Another challenge for the new device is helping unearth the fossilized remains of one of the longest dinosaurs ever discovered a 110-foseismosaurus affectionately dubbed vice cross-sectio- “Earth Shaker" David Gillette state paleontologist for Utah and director of the project said the Oak Ridge system could prove to be a scientists boon for dinosaur-huntinwho have scarcely altered their excavation techniques since the 19th century Although Gillette emphasized that GDT has not yet produced "satisfying results" he called the device promising" and said it may be able u reduce dramatically the amount of time it takes to unearth a dinosaur “With remote sensing we would be able to know exactly where to go and how far to go" he said If it proves effective GDT could allow paleontologists to make greater use of power equipment like backhoes to reach dinosaur remains more quickly Gillette said In addition to dinosaur hunting Witten said other possible applications for GDT include helping archaeologists find large objects such a- - buried hmldmgs and assisting geologists in locating mineral deposits Hut the engineer concedes a wide arrav of underground treasures — including annent jewels and small dinosaur eggs — will probably escape liHTs srrulmv Iving Silently 'Mint'd until an to Mil trior e m'iivIhp e IS (if eloped to p otic Hur'ti s it' nether teaches I g Ms 1 !l ' 1 f 3 f i I i - 1 i t f "l S - K 1 i Ut J mjym I J' i LJ i 't i X J U! 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