Bill Kuperman: The middle years

Bill returned to The Naval Research Laboratory in the mid 80's. The multi-decadal cold war was coming to an end. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) had established the Office of Naval Technology (ONT) in 1980 which had an emphasis of transitioning fundamental research results to applications for the operational Navy. Bill, a master of establishing partnerships and an excellent judge of research potential in young candidates, and reflecting his early work at NRL, the SACLANT Centre in La Spezia, Italy and NORDA (The Naval Oceanographic Research and Development Activity) in Bay St Louis, MS, quickly became a major contributor to the ONT undersea program and Chief Scientist of the NRL Acoustics Division. In retrospect, though clearly not the case, it looks like he was preparing for his time at Scripps and The Marine Physical Laboratory