Text COM:1915422 (464 lines) [W1]

From: Internet: Vraja Lila <vraja1@hotmail.com>

Date: 08-Dec-98 06:21

Cc: Apocalypse 1999? (Are you ready?) [265] (sender: Kaunteya (das) JPS

(Mayapur - IN))

Subject:

------------------------------------------------------------

Fears mount over millennium bombs

Will the Year 2000

problem make a

dangerous

situation

explosive?

The multiple warheads from

a US missile light up the sky

during a live exercise over

the vast atoll of Kwajalein.

The atoll is used by the US

military as a test site.

By Kari

Huus

MSNBC

Dec 6 — Perhaps no entity on earth faces a more

mammoth Year 2000 challenge than the U.S.

Department of Defense, which has some 1.5

million computers, 28,000 systems and 10,000

networks. Within its purview, no area has

prompted more concern than the country’s nuclear

weapons arsenal, and whether its control and

command is safe from the millennial bug.

Full coverage: The millennium bug

Global nuclear

club

U.S. and Russia are

the focus of most

concern in the Y2K

battle

Country

Warheads

United States

7250

C.I.S.

6240

France

449

United Kingdom

260

China

225

India

Pakistan

Israel

SOURCE: Natural Resources

Defense Council

THE CONCERN LIES with computer systems

programmed to use two rather than four digits

to describe the

year — for example “79” instead of “1979.” When

the year

2000 arrives, experts predict that some

computers may

mistake the date for 1900 and shut down or

malfunction.

They may also feed bad information to other

systems with

which they are linked.

The Pentagon stands by its Year 2000 (or

Y2K) effort,

which it says has been under way since 1995 and

budgeted at

$2.5 billion over five years. But defense

officials don’t offer

guarantees. “None of us knows exactly what is

going to

happen,” says Pentagon spokesperson Susan

Hansen. “We

feel cautiously optimistic that what will

happen is some

nuisances rather than crises… We feel pretty

confident that

we will be able to provide for the national

security of the

United States.”

Cautious optimism on the part of the DoD

has done little

to reassure critics. A recently released report

by the British

American Security Information Council (BASIC)

Washington says Department of Defense efforts

to address

the Y2K issue have been riddled by “severe and

recurring

problems.” And, BASIC notes, there is even less

information

available about Moscow’s efforts, much less the

rest of the

world’s nuclear weapons infrastructure.

The combination of possible computer

glitches and the

hair-trigger posture of U.S. and Russian

nuclear forces raise

the specter of a missile launch based on

compromised

surveillance data, or a communication breakdown

in the event

of a real attack, according to the BASIC

report. “U.S.

decision-makers must take steps now to preclude

disaster

should the Pentagon fail,” says the report’s

author, Michael

Kraig, a Scoville fellow.

RISKS AND MYTHS

Analysts on both sides of the debate are

quick to say

that missiles are highly unlikely to launch

themselves at the

stroke of midnight on Jan.1, 2000.

Rather, most concerns about military

computer glitches

are focused on the vast web of computerized

communications systems under STRATCOM — U.S.

Strategic Command, which controls the country’s

nuclear

arsenal. Equally worrisome is U.S. Space

Command (part of

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense

Command), responsible for early-warning radar

and

surveillance — the basis for military

decisions. (For a review,

see the Federation of American Scientists’

Nuclear Forces

Guide).

As in other sectors, no one is sure how

the military’s

overall procedures will work if one part of the

system fails.

What raises the stakes is that both the United

States and

Russia maintain “launch on warning” postures —

calling for

nuclear retaliation upon detection of the

other’s launch of

missiles.

If date-related problems produce

inaccurate

early-warning data, or if communications within

the military

command are compromised, there will be 10

minutes to half

an hour to clarify the situation and make the

decision to

launch or hold back.

Even in normal times misinterpretation

of data frequently

leads to heightened alert. Signals are

sometimes garbled by

solar disturbances. In 1979, personnel at NORAD

saw the

numbers indicating ballistic missile launches

suddenly jump

from zero to 20. In preparation to retaliate,

nuclear bomber

crews started their engines, and Minutemen

missiles were

readied. Ultimately, the data was traced to a

faulty embedded

chip design.

Who's benefitting from the frenzy?

Given all the work required to make U.S.

weapons

systems Y2K safe, who’s getting the contracts

— and

subsequently earning big fees? Well, it’s not

a windfall

for defense giants who traditionally make

most of their

money from government contracts. In fact, the

amount

budgeted — $2.54 billion spread over five

years —is

hardly a blip on the screen for companies

like defense

and aerospace behemoth Lockheed Martin Corp.

Lockheed says it has had piecemeal

contracts on the

overall Y2K effort, but that most of its

input came under

regular government maintenance contracts.

Compare the

amount the company is earning on Y2K upgrades

to the

$80 million the company is spending to make

itself

internally compliant, and there’s little or

no benefit. “It’s a

wash, or less than a wash, ” says Jim Fetig,

spokesman for Lockheed. “The outgo is bigger

than the

input. “ The same message came from Northrop

Grumman, which makes military surveillance

systems,

military electronics and combat aircraft.

Despite winning

a handful of small information technology

contracts,

“we’ve noticed no big upsurge, ” a spokesman

said.

— Kari Huus

In 1995, Moscow went into a state of

high alert when its

early warning radar mistook a Norwegian

scientific probe for

a U.S. trident missile launched from the

Baltic. The response

decision was elevated all the way to President

Boris Yeltsin,

his defense minister and the chief of staff,

who decided

against action when they determined the

“impact” would be

outside Russian borders.

There is also a danger that, in the

event of data correctly

interpreting attack, communication systems used

coordinate a reaction may malfunction. Indeed,

the DoD’s

efforts to prevent this breakdown go only so

far, since the

military has shifted from largely dedicated

communications

systems to commercial networks. In testimony

before a

House subcommittee in June, Deputy Secretary of

Defense

John Hamre conceded, “If Ma Bell’s or Bell

Atlantic’s

system fails on Year 2000, we’re going to have

mission

failure, and I don’t have any control over

that.”

FAULTY CHAIN

Few military analysts suggest that 2000

will bring the

Armageddon. “The most likely thing is that Y2K

problems

get lost in the noise of flaky computer

problems,” says John

Pike, security analyst for the Federation of

American

Scientists, a privately funded, non-profit

organization in

Washington, D.C.

However, Pike believes the greatest risk

lies with events

that follow component failure. “The thing you

worry about is

people improvising,” he says, causing a

relatively innocuous

event to escalate, as happened in the Three

Mile Island and

Chernobyl crises.

Pike paints a scenario: “Most probably,

the response is

not that a missile will jump out of its silo at

midnight, but that

the door of the missile silo will get stuck.” A

technician

whose job it is to keep the missile ready for

use drops his

wrench into the silo, tearing a hole in the

fuel tank, causing an

explosion. The explosion severs communication

with the

base, and it goes into a higher state of alert,

which raises

concern at military bases in Russia.

“If systems behave peculiarly, people

will be nervous,

overworked, and stop trusting the system,” says

Pike.

“Consequently the man-machine interface starts

behaving in

unpredictable ways.”

HOW MUCH PROGRESS IS ENOUGH?

The Department of Defense says the

situation is well

under control. It reports that it has

identified 2,581

mission-critical systems, of which 53 percent

are now fully

Y2K ready. Another 1,014 are going through the

paces, and

a few hundred are to be retired or replaced

before 2000. The

idea is to finish all the fixes by Jan. 1, 1999

— three months

earlier than previously announced, according to

spokesperson

Hansen. This will leave ample time for testing,

and including

Y2K testing in military exercises.

But BASIC, which did extensive

documentation of the

DoD process, contends that there are serious

flaws in the

Pentagon’s representation — including ad-hoc

funding, lax

management and inadequate standards for

declaring a system

“Y2K compliant.” In short, the fixes won’t be

finished and

tested in time, says BASIC. “Initial research

findings… have

resulted in no confidence that the Pentagon’s

present

program will meet the Year 2000 challenge,”

according to its

report.

Those findings were based in part on the

government’s

own conclusions, which started to set off

alarms last spring.

The Office of Management and Budget has

expressed its

concerns that DoD will not meet its goals. The

General

Accounting Office for the Senate Committee on

Governmental Affairs warned in a report in

April, “Time is

running out to correct Department of Defense

systems that

could malfunction… the impact of these failures

could be

widespread, costly and potentially disruptive

to military

operations worldwide.”

An array of audit reports posted by the

Inspector

General for the DoD suggest many military

departments are

lagging behind schedule on Y2K efforts, and

predict

disruptions in command and control, testing and

day to day

operations.

THE NUCLEAR CLUB

Assuming that the Pentagon meets its

goals, however, it

seems clear that Russia will not, particularly

in light of its

severe economic constraints. Moscow has

insisted that the

Russian system is different — not susceptible

to Y2K

glitches — but the argument has failed to

convince. Defense

Deputy Secretary Hamre described Russia’s early

warning

system as “fragile” in Senate testimony. “Our

concern is that

Russia and China have only a very rudimentary

understanding of the Year 2000 problem, which

is why we

need to reach out to them to make sure they

have custodial

confidence in their own systems,” he said.

That was in June. As of October,

Washington and

Moscow were discussing the possibility of

exchanging

personnel in military sites to usher in the

millennium, which

spokesperson Hansen says will “… relay

information and

relieve the anxiety in case of a glitch ... to

ensure no one

misconstrues Y2K problem for an attack.”

Some critics of U.S. nuclear policy,

however, say that

the fundamental flaw is in the posture of U.S.

and Russian

forces in the post-Cold War era. BASIC, as well

as members

of Congress and other non-governmental groups,

urge the

U.S. and Russia to “stand down or de-alert”

missiles that

remain on a hair-trigger prior to 2000. Though

most agree it is

too late to separate missiles from warheads,

BASIC’s Kraig

urges the two sides to otherwise disable

missiles.

Others are calling for an independent

audit by a

non-governmental agency and fuller public

disclosure of the

results. “We don’t know squat about testing at

STRATCOM,” says Pike of FAS. “We know a lot

about Y2K compliance of parking garages at

Washington

headquarters than computers that are planning

thermonuclear

war.”

The Defense Department says it’s just

not a practical

solution to bring in outsiders unfamiliar with

the multitude of

rules and regulations to which they are

subject. And as with

many of the ideas being bandied about at the

cusp of 1999,

there’s just not enough time. Says Hansen: “By

the time

[outside auditors] got up to speed it would

probably be past

the year 2000.”

Federation of American Scientists

STRATCOM home page

U.S. Department of Defense home page

U.S. Army Y2K page

______________________________________________________

Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

(Text COM:1915422) -----------------------------------------