| By Linda D.
Kozaryn American
Forces Press Service BRUSSELS, Belgium -- No one really
knows what will happen after the clock strikes midnight
on Dec. 31, 1999. How will the Defense Department's
30,000 computer systems react as Jan. 1, 2000, begins
ticking? Computer glitches could affect the military's
pay, supplies, equipment and, consequently, overall
readiness. Pentagon officials are now preparing for what
Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre calls "the El
Nino of cyberspace." Department computer experts are
tackling what's become known as the Year 2000 problem, or
"Y2K." Experts say reaching the year 2000 may
cause everything from microwave ovens to DoD's nuclear
command and control systems to go haywire. Automated data
processing programmers for decades saved expensive memory
by using only the last two digits of years -- 1998 would
be written "98." In 2000, then, when computers
see "00," they may not know whether it's 2000
or 1900. So as the digital date goes from "99"
to "00," computers may go seriously out of
whack, causing a passel of problems. Think about it --
computers today are involved in every aspect of modern
life. They're in cars, planes, furnaces, air-conditioning
units. Government agencies and private companies use
computers to process pay, health benefits, life insurance
and other vital information. Digital transmissions are
the basis for countless transactions. What will happen if
computer data is no longer reliable? Or if computer
programs simply quit running? Some credit cards with
expiration dates beyond 1999 are already being kicked
back at checkout counters. So what's being done to
prevent future computer chaos? As much as possible,
according to the Pentagon's deputy secretary. Computer
experts throughout government and private industry are
working overtime, Hamre said, during a recent interview
with the American Forces Press Service during a trip to
Vienna. DoD, in particular, is justifiably concerned and
heavily motivated to deal with Y2K, Hamre said. The
military has more than 25,000 computer systems, of which
about 3,000 are deemed "mission critical."
"If they do not function," Hamre said,
"there will be a serious loss of some capability in
the department." Losing an accounting system, for
example, may not seem crucial, he said, but "if it's
a payroll system and you can't pay the troops, that's a
lot more serious." So far, defense officials have
fixed about a third of the mission-critical systems,
Hamre reported. Another 800 are in the process of being
replaced. "We still have about 1,200 systems that
are crucial to our operations that are not yet fixed, and
we have only 18 months left." About $1.9 billion is
allocated to fix the military's computers, Hamre said.
One of the hardest problems is finding programmers.
"There are startling stories of American companies
hiring programmers from Ireland and flying them back and
forth on weekends so they can see their families,"
he said. "We [the United States] actually changed
our immigration laws to allow 90,000 computer experts to
immigrate to the United States this year." The
deputy secretary said he is confident the department will
be able to keep its operations going. Special task forces
are working on critical areas such as financial
transactions and air traffic control safety issues, he
said. "We have a dedicated task force working to
ensure all systems required for nuclear command and
control are secure," Hamre noted. "Everything
from the early warning satellites down to the custodial
codes required for fusing and arming. That will all be
OK." Fixing the computers takes time, however, Hamre
pointed out. "In the old days programmers worked out
their own idiosyncratic ways of doing shorthand," he
explained. "Everyone had their own style. We didn't
really start developing consistent styles for programming
until the '70s and '80s. In one program, it may refer to
dates with a letter designator -- date equals the letter
'e.' Any time it sees the letter 'e,' it goes back and
looks at a date calculation. That will vary from one
program to the next." It's not difficult to change
the programs, Hamre said, but it's tedious. "This is
very much journeymen's work," he said. "It's
going through that original computer code and looking at
every line and finding if it has a date in it and
changing it. It doesn't take sophisticated programming
skills, but it's tedious and it's easy to miss
things." In the months ahead, defense officials will
do everything they can to correct the department's
computers, Hamre said. But he admits he foresees some
awkward moments due to what he calls "the embedded
chip problem." "Most of what runs these
computer systems are little computer chips on a circuit
board," he said. "Until several years ago, most
of these chips were not built to be year 2000 compliant.
The problem is, none of us knows where all these chips
are." Sometimes the manufacturer doesn't even know
where all the chips came from, Hamre said. "You can
have a modern tape recorder or a digital microwave oven
and it probably has one of these chips in it. You're not
going to know until Jan. 1, 2000. They could fail in
unpredictable ways." Embedded chips could cause
problems throughout the department in the numerous
off-the-shelf products bought in the last five to eight
years, Hamre said. "We're going to have some
surprises that we can't predict right now." Pentagon
leaders are also concerned about how Y2K will affect
Russia's defenses. Like the United States, Russia's early
warning system uses a series of electronic-based radar
and satellite systems to monitor the world to know if
missiles are launched. With the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the Russians left places where they had radar.
They now have holes in their early warning systems, Hamre
said, and, "They're nervous about having good
visibility. From everything we can see, they haven't
really tackled the year 2000 problem." The United
States wants to set up a joint early warning center to
share information should the Russian systems fail, Hamre
said. "If the Russians go blank on Jan. 1, in the
year 2000, they're going to be sitting right next to
Americans who are looking at their systems and saying,
'Don't worry, you can look at ours.' "We think it's
very important for them not to feel apprehensive about
the safety and long-term viability of their nuclear
forces. We want them to feel confident they can command
and control their nuclear forces," Hamre said.
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