This morning (10/19) CNN ran a story on some testing the Department of Defense did on their computers. Seems they had no problems at all during the test and they're preparing to do more. Official word: don't worry about it, Y2K's going to be nothing much. Any thoughts?

-- Tommy (tmcclendon@ccboe.net), October 19, 1998

Answers

All I can tell you is, go directly to the source and make up your mind yourself.

Here's a quote from the DoD Year 2000 Management plan, ver. 2.0, September 28, 1998:

"...It is imperative that we incorporate into our pronouncements on the Y2K problem the utmost confidence in our ability to detect and react forcefully to such hostile actions, regardless of the reality of the situation."

http://www.doncio.navy.mil/y2k/year2000.htm

Disenformation at it's best. But I understand the need for this one. Read the entire report, and you'll see they'll never be ready on time or even able to protect us. (Acrobat Reader needed, you'll need this plug-in installed for most of government -real- work/reports/plans on Y2K.)

-- Chris (catsy@pond.com), October 19, 1998.

I also saw the report on CNN this morning and as I recall the test was done on one plane which they flew by remote control. A rollover test was done on it while in flight. The plane did not fall out of the sky. That's good news. The report did not discuss whether or not any other systems on the plane failed and I am not sure testing one plane is adequate so I sure hope they are planning to do alot more testing, although I don't remember hearing that statement in the story.

The reporter gave the impression that the DOD was in good shape. I am not sure what else the DOD would say. "We are in really big trouble and are not going to finish and quite frankly we are concerned that this will comprimise national security and we may possibly be quite vulnerable."

Even if the previous statement were gospel, does anyone think that the DOD would ever admit this? I mean the main job of the DOD is to protect us. If they go around telling us(and terrorists) "things are very poor, indeed..." I think this could give some people ideas about attacks on the US and its citizens if there is the perception of vulnerability. If my assumptions are even close to being "on", then I think it will take some reading between the lines and a lot of common sense on the part of individuals to figure out what to believe. Does it make sense for the DOD to raise fear and panic about our nation's security? No. That would be like an invitation for trouble. Does that have any bearing on what the truth of the matter is? No. The DOD has a job to do. I think they are doing it to the best of their ability at the moment. I still don't buy the CNN report, but I do hope a bunch of terrorists saw it and believed it.

-- Pam Armstrong (armstc@frontiernet.net), October 19, 1998.

If I had any answers I could not post them. However, I can say that I heard some parts of DoD started getting off the stick in 93. So they have had quite a while already - more than most big organizations.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), October 19, 1998.

I have a customer who is works for a manufacturing facility that makes equipment for the D.O.D. (i.e. they made the radar that was used in the Gulf War) Her job is like a systems analyst- she takes what the programmers do, and presents it to whoever(I'm technically- challenged) Anyway, as of 2 weeks ago, their 70 million dollar computer system was not ready to go, and things did not look good. Everyone is being asked to work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, no vacation, and they put a refridgerator in for them. Two haircuts ago (I'm a hairdresser), she told me that she already had water and food that she was storing for y2k. This month she avoided my questions on y2k-kept calling it "their new computer system", like that is all that it was. She said that a lot of the "grunts" attitudes' were,"Well if I'm that important to this company, then I can take off and what are you going to do, fire me? And if things are that bad and hard to fix, I can't be held responsible", so they don't seem to be worrying that much. After all, their bosses are leaving at 5pm, so it ain't all that troublesome to them.

-- madeline (runner@bcpl.net), October 19, 1998.