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> ** Original Subject: SNET: Essential Command System At Risk For Y2K Failure
> ** Original Sender: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> ** Original Date: Sat, 6 Nov 1999 11:17:57 +1000
> ** Original Message follows...
-> SNETNEWS Mailing List
Essential Command System At Risk For Y2K Failure
Computers/Internet News • Source: Defense Week
Published: November 1, 1999
Author: John Donnelly
Posted on 11/01/1999 05:37:57 PST by Stand Watch Listen
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a381d97b516b0.htm
The computer system used by the White House and top commanders to plan and
execute major military missions has not proven ready for 2000, the
Pentagon's inspector general said in a report released Friday. With two
months until the new year, the audit raises important questions about the
military's preparedness to deal with the prospect that crucial computers
could malfunction when their internal calendars roll over to 2000.
At issue is the Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES),
used in peacetime and war to manage personnel and equipment -- including
theater-level nuclear-war plans, the new report said. JOPES is an "essential
mission application" in the Global Command and Control System – the
military's single, worldwide battle-management network.
"JOPES is the foundation of conventional command and control," the auditors
wrote. "Therefore, it is a likely target for information-warfare attacks. It
is imperative that the unified commands have complete operational
contingency plans to allay the problems triggered by a JOPES failure caused
by either Y2K-related problems or by information/warfare attacks." However,
the report said, neither the Joint Staff nor commands in Europe, the
Pacific, the Middle East and elsewhere have adequate contingency plans ready
in the event the Y2K bug disables the JOPES system. The Joint Staff agreed
and is formulating such a plan.
"Without complete operational contingency plans, the DOD ability to respond
to military crises in a timely manner was reduced and there was increased
risk that DoD will not have adequate alternative ways to quickly respond to
combatant command requests for equipment and personnel," the report said.
The Pentagon has made great strides in tackling the Y2K bug. William Curtis,
the Pentagon's principal director for the Year 2000 program, said 99 percent
of the military's mission-critical systems are compliant. Moreover, given
the new report's spotlight on the JOPES shortfalls, that system, too, will
probably be made compliant, said Robert Lieberman, the assistant inspector
general for auditing.
However, if the military's worldwide battle-manage-ment network could pass
muster while a core application is not compliant, it raises serious
questions about how meaningful the positive compliance figures are, experts
say. The inspector general's report begs the question: What else has fallen
through the cracks?
Officials at the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Pentagon's
information-technology organization, think the report exaggerates the
problem. Air Force Lt. Col. Intae Kim, the agency's chief engineer for the
global command system, in a letter included in the report, said the problems
"were well documented with work-arounds or fixes ...."
But Evelyn Klemstine, the inspector general's director of International
Programs, says having a fallback option is not the same as certifying the
system itself will work.
Klemstine also said JOPES was chosen for auditing because of its importance.
In June, her team discovered that the military's system for assessing the
readiness of its personnel -- the Status of Resources and Training System --
was also inappropriately certified as fixed. Consequently, the earlier
report found, "the services' ability to report unit resources and training
in a Y2K environment was not assured."
John Pike, a military expert with the Federation of American Scientists,
expressed concern when told JOPES was not compliant.
"JOPES is the application they use to run wars," Pike said. "It's the core
application for figuring out who's supposed to be where, when. It's the
application they use to plan everything worth speaking of," from joint
exercises to peacekeeping operations to nuclear strikes in Korea or the
Middle East.
According to the Oct. 27 inspector general report, the Defense Information
Systems Agency certified the overall global command system as compliant
without proper testing of JOPES, perhaps the system's most important single
application.
"Just because your computer works doesn't mean every application does," said
Klemstine.
"They haven't fully tested the interfaces" between JOPES and several service
systems that manage the deployment of forces, said Klemstine in an
interview. "In addition, there is COTS [commercial-off- the-shelf] software
in it that they know is not Y2K compliant ...."
What's more, she said, "Our biggest problem with JOPES and the [global
command system] is they keeping changing the configuration baseline." From
one baseline to the next, 70 elements had been changed, she said. "How can
you say it's Y2K-compliant when you have so many revisions to your
baseline?"
Curtis, the Y2K director, said in an interview that configuration management
is a major focus of the Pentagon's overall effort of late. The Joint Staff's
fallback plan included use of the secret military Internet, secure faxes and
phones.
But the plan "did not offer guidance on how to orchestrate operations" and
didn't meet the criteria required for emergency plans, the report said.
As for the regional commands, the U.S. Central Command's plan "lacked the
specific procedures to safeguard the joint operational planning function in
the event of a Y2K-related disruption." Ditto for other commands. The U.S.
Pacific Command plan "included using messengers with hand-carried
information if all else fails."
Last July, Secretary of Defense William Cohen told reporters: "There is no
question that on Jan. 1, 2000, and every day thereafter the Department of
Defense is going to be ready." But in late September, the Senate's special
Y2K committee was far more skeptical. Of the Pentagon's tardiness in fixing
mission-critical systems, the panel said: "These late scheduled completion
dates leave little to no time for schedule slippage or unforeseen events,
which for [information- technology]-related projects are common."
The Senate panel's conclusion? The Pentagon is at "considerable risk" of not
meeting the Jan. 1, 2000, deadline. Y2K boss Curtis had not seen the JOPES
report. But he gave Defense Week the latest overall figures: Fewer than 50
mission critical systems out of 2,414 still have to undergo "higher level
testing" - required exams that are more integrated and realistic than the
system-by-system kind. The goal is to finish by Dec. 15, he said. Will that
be enough time to solve problems? "The number of problems has been very
small" in tests to date, he said, and mostly testers found a fix "pretty
much on the spot."
Curtis said the Pentagon, which owns one-third of the government's computer
systems and operates 600 installations worldwide, wants to make New Year's
Day "the largest non-event in history."
Referring to JOPES, Lieberman, the assistant inspector general, said: "It's
a big system with lots of users and a lot of importance in a mobilization
scenario. Due to its importance to the warfighters, I'm quite sure
management will turn to and put some extra emphasis on making sure they do
everything that needs to be done."
More broadly, though, Lieberman does not expect all critical systems to be
adequately tested by Jan. 1. And he expects failures. The key question, he
says, is: Does the military have proper contingency plans in place to deal
with the problems in U.S. systems or, more likely, breakdowns in nations
that host allied forces? The question is open and will remain so for some
weeks, he said. But if, and only if, the military tackles the problem as
robustly as it has to date, all will be well, he said.
>CONTACT: Don Moniak 806-358-2622
>
>
>Government Report Describes Lack of Rigor,
>
>Structure in Y2K Nuclear Weapons Review
>
>
></bold>A recent Government Accounting Office (GAO) report described
>Department of Energy and Sandia National Laboratory Year 2000 (Y2K)
>computer compliance efforts for the United States' Nuclear Weapons
>Arsenal as, "<bold><italic>often unstructured, did not always include thorough
>documentation, and were subjected to minimal peer
>review</italic></bold>."(1) The
>Department of Energy (DOE) and Sandia National Laboratory, the
>responsible parties for insuring Y2K compliance in the nine weapons
>systems involving about 9,000 nuclear weapons, failed to develop and
>implement a standard procedure for Y2K compliance verification on the
>arsenal. As a result, great disparity and variability exists in how
>individual weapons systems were checked for Y2K compliance.
>
>
>Instead, individual weapon designers working for independent
>contractors determined and documented Y2K compliance procedures.
>In the case of the W-88 Trident II warhead, the weapon designer relied
>upon his memory to insure Y2K compliance, and GAO personnel had to
>verify Y2K compliance for the software code in the weapon's
>microprocessor.
>
>
>In spite of the lack of documentation to justify credible assurances, the
>GAO did report that they "believe" nuclear weapons will not be affected
>by Year 2000 problems. Only four of the weapons systems contain
>microprocessors, none of which store or generate dates nor rely upon
>dates to function properly. However, as of August 20, 1999, two types
>of weapons testing equipment were found to be Y2K noncompliant--one
>at the Pantex Plant northeast of Amarillo, Texas and one at the Kansas
>City Plant in Missouri. Pantex has claimed that all of its systems are Y2K
>compliant.
>
>
>"A single employee being allowed to rely upon his memory to confirm
>Y2K compliance for a weapon with 20 times the power of the Hiroshima
>and Nagasaki bombs indicates some deep-seated problems at the Labs.
>This is just the latest evidence that in the absence of external oversight,
>the Department of Energy and its Nuclear Weapons Labs still cannot be
>trusted to act in the public interest ," said Don Moniak of Serious Texans
>Against Nuclear Dumping.
>
>
>(1) <smaller> <bigger>Government Accounting Office. <italic>Y2K Status of
>the Nation's Nuclear
>Weapons</italic>. GAO-RCED-99-272R., August 20, 1999.
>
>
>This particular report has to be directly ordered from GAO. It is not on
>their web site. If you would like a copy, it is only 8 pages and I can FAX
>it, but if there is no hurry for it, please try to order it from GAO. Got to
>http://www.gao.gov for ordering information.
>
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-> Posted by: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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