U.S. Military Wages War on New Enemy: Y2K

Even as U.S. military forces lead the NATO offensive against Slobodan Milosevic, they are also preparing to do battle with another dangerous foe: the Y2K bug lurking in the computers that run much of the military’s high-tech weaponry.

Government agencies large and small are struggling to avert the Y2K computer problem, but nowhere are the stakes higher and the situation more technologically daunting than at the Department of Defense.

With personnel, equipment and facilities spread over 660 locations around the globe, the Defense Department uses 1.5 million computers and 28,000 computer systems--some of which date from the computer equivalent of the Pleistocene era and are highly bug-vulnerable.

Everything from nuclear weapons to the reservation system for tee times at base golf courses is dependent on computers.

One reason the U.S. has become the world’s most powerful military force has been its ability to harness computers to collect and disseminate mountains of information and to ensure that firepower can be directed swiftly and accurately.

But critics both inside and outside the Pentagon worry that the Defense Department’s success with computers is also a potential Achilles’ heel, and that the Y2K bug could become the chance of a lifetime for an adversary to land a sucker punch on U.S. forces or allies and thus win a victory of enormous propaganda value.

Under this nightmare scenario, the Y2K bug lashes out on New Year’s Eve and “blinds” a portion of the military’s computers, and suddenly, U.S. warplanes, Tomahawk missiles, early warning devices, surveillance systems and information-needy combat troops become useless.

To ensure that this does not happen, the Department of Defense is hip-deep in an unprecedented, $3-billion computer repair and replacement program.

After a sluggish beginning, the military’s assault on the enemy lurking in its computers has begun to gain ground--but not enough to satisfy critics in Congress and a private-industry watchdog group.

To get his bureaucratic troops moving, an exasperated Defense Secretary William Cohen last year issued an unusually blunt order declaring Y2K a threat to national security.

“This isn’t just a computer-geek issue; this is a war-fighting issue, and I’m holding you responsible for it,” Cohen told his top deputies.

With Cohen’s boot to the backside for motivation, military forces are spending much of this year in mock-warfare Y2K exercises, including the first at-sea Y2K test for a naval battle group, staged off Southern California.

“Saddam Hussein and the others have to realize that there is no good time to attack, no window, no opportunity, no hole in which the Navy is not prepared to respond, and Y2K doesn’t change that,” said Capt. Timothy Traverso, the top Y2K bug-chaser for the Navy’s Pacific Fleet.

Traverso’s upbeat assessment came at the end of the Y2K drill for the aircraft carrier Constellation and 13 ships that constitute its battle group, a force that may be patrolling the Persian Gulf next December and enforcing the no-fly zone in Iraq.

During a 14-day Y2K readiness test, the ships’ computerized clocks were repeatedly rolled ahead to the Dec. 31 witching hour--in what is called a “midnight crossing.” The goal was to test the numerous patch jobs Traverso has ordered in the 160-plus systems in the battle group that are vulnerable to Y2K.

Navy brass wanted to assess the battle group’s ability “in a Y2K environment” to detect hostile ships and aircraft; launch and retrieve F-14 Tomcats, F-18 Hornets and other warplanes; and fire a full range of computer-controlled weapons, including Tomahawks.

To create a “stressed environment,” a general alarm was sounded during one phase of the test, sending 5,000-plus sailors aboard the Constellation scurrying to battle stations. Traverso judged the exercise a success, although some systems remain to be tested before the battle group deploys in June.

“It was like herding a soccer field full of cats at the beginning, trying to figure out all the systems,” said Mark Boose, the civilian expert hired to direct and assess the effort. “I think we’ve got ‘em corralled now, though.”

Congressional critics, such as Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Long Beach), want to believe Pentagon officials when they say that “mission-critical” systems will be repaired with time to spare. But Horn and others say more tests and more proof will be needed before they are satisfied.

As late as November, Horn, chairman of the House subcommittee on government management, information and technology, graded the military’s Y2K performance as worthy of only a D-minus. In February he upgraded that to a C-minus.

On Wednesday, Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, announced that the Department of Defense was one of several federal agencies that failed to meet the March 31 deadline set by President Clinton to have all mission-critical systems fixed. Among the 156 department systems still in need of Y2K-proofing, Bennett said, is the mission-planning system for the F-117A stealth fighter.

“I think there is a tendency in the military to put a happy face on their Y2K progress because they’re afraid to admit just how vulnerable they would be if systems start to fail,” said Zachary Selden, an analyst with Business Executives for National Security, a Washington-based lobbying group that has goaded the Pentagon to step up Y2K efforts.

U.S. armed forces have already learned a tragic lesson about what can happen when highly computerized weaponry malfunctions or personnel fail to move fast enough to correct computer glitches.

An after-action analysis blamed a computer glitch for the failure during the Persian Gulf War to shoot down the Iraqi Scud missile that slammed into the Army barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Because two computer clocks were not synchronized, the radar system computer did not communicate with the fire-control computer. The Scud attack killed 28 American soldiers, the largest single American loss in the war. Software to correct the clock problem was available but not installed.

“Technology has given the U.S. an enormous military advantage,” Selden said, “but it is also a kind of Achilles’ heel.”

When military officials gather to discuss Y2K, mention of the U.S.-Iraq confrontation is never far away.

In a comment that stirred considerable consternation on both sides of the Atlantic in late 1997, the head of the British military’s Y2K program told the Financial Times of London that American counterparts have confided to him that “if Saddam Hussein wanted to launch an attack on the U.S., the first day of the year 2000 would be the time to do it.”

U.S. officials also are worried that a Y2K foul-up could lead to a nuclear war if the Russians’ computerized early-warning systems fail, and out of panic, the Russians are tempted to launch a missile strike.

In both the U.S. and Russian missile forces, the decision to launch a missile is made by human beings, not by computers, and thus the chances for an accidental, pre-programmed launch is considered virtually nonexistent. There is a greater chance, however, that the Russians could launch because of bogus information from their computers.

To keep the Russians from making such a horrific miscalculation, the U.S. has offered to build a facility at a missile command center at Colorado Springs so that Russian personnel on site could receive immediate notification of missile launches and relay that information to Moscow. The proposal came in the wake of a meeting in September between Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

After NATO airstrikes against Serbian targets began, the Russian news agency quoted military officials in Moscow as vowing not to cooperate with the U.S. missile-warning plan--although U.S. officials hope they will reconsider after hostilities end.

The U.S. military was pioneering the use of computers when civilians were still stuck with paper and pencil. But many of the systems are vulnerable to glitches and incompatibilities. And Defense Department computers must interface with numerous private computer systems, including those of 800 banks for the military’s payroll and purchases.

“If we built houses the way we built software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization,” Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The services, including some combat units, were admittedly slow to assess the magnitude of the Y2K problem, in which time-sensitive computers can misread 2000 as 1900 and either shut down or spit out inaccurate information.

Top priority has been to ensure that computers involved with nuclear weapons have been rid of Y2K problems. Defense officials have assured Congress that the task has been completed--both for land-based missiles and Trident submarines.

But only a third of the military’s computer systems are covered by the high-priority designation of mission-critical. A report by the Office of Management and Budget said that only half of the thousands of systems that are not mission-critical have gotten the repairs needed to make them Y2K-compliant.

“The [Department of Defense] is like a large ship headed toward an iceberg,” Hamre said. “We have successfully changed course to avoid the tip, but we must continue to ensure we miss the submerged portion.”