Undersea Instrumentation Reliability: Where Away?

The author is concerned with the lack of performance built into many of the instruments provided for today's underseas research: over 35 percent of the "off-the-shelf" equipment fails to operate as delivered, while 75 percent of the developmental hardware fails to meet specifications, and 50 percent of the delivered developmental equipment fails to work. These figures, in part, detail why our progress is being impeded, and the consensus is that the lack of competent engineering may well be the most serious problem.