Air Force mission-critical systems debugged, ready for Y2K Released: 10 Nov 1999

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by Staff Sgt. Cynthia Miller Air Force Print News WASHINGTON -- The last of nearly 400 mission-critical systems in the Air Force was certified year 2000 compliant and fielded Oct. 25.

Of those 400 mission-critical systems, Air Combat Command was responsible for making sure that about 170 of them are ready for the new millennium.

"Being the major force provider, ACC was tagged with the task of making sure most weapon systems and combat operations throughout the Air Force were ready to go," said Capt. Wilson Camelo, a spokesman for ACC. "We accomplished this through a series of exercises called Y2K Flags that assessed our ability to fly, fight and win in the year 2000."

With the compliance of the U-2 aircraft, the last mission-critical system to be tested, ACC ensured the Air Force's compliance with a Congressional mandate to operationally test all mission-critical systems in at least two exercises.

"We've had a very robust Y2K program and our systems will remain safe and reliable," said Brig. Gen. Gary A. Ambrose, director of Air Force Year 2000 Program. "With both operational and administrative systems compliant, we'll also remain able to take care of our people. The medical, personnel and pay systems are ready to go, and we have high confidence that all systems are going to work well."

But the big question now is, "what's next?"

According to Ambrose, the Air Force still has about 50 non-mission-critical systems that are yet to be certified and fielded. Of those 50 systems, 18 will be shut down, and the rest are expected to be ready by Nov. 30.

"We're focusing now on the things we must wrap up by the end of the year," Ambrose said. "The Air Force is out taking a hard look at the configuration of its systems.

"We've done a great job fixing and testing our hardware and software, but now we're focusing on making sure the fixed and tested software is what we're actually running because, if it's not what you have loaded, it doesn't matter how well you fixed it."

As the clock on Y2K winds down, the general recommends units take one last look at their contingency and continuity of operations plans. "Our approach to Y2K has been to reduce risk by focusing on the things we control and making sure those things are ready to go," he said.

Despite a growing confidence in the preparations made thus far, there are still some concerns that systems will operate as planned come Jan. 1.

"There are literally tens of millions of computer chips and hundreds of millions of lines of code," the general said. "We're very confident in our systems and we're very confident in our installations, but there's always the possibility that within one of those millions of lines of code or computer chips, there's some non-compliant stuff."

Although the Air Force has worked closely with civilian communities at home and abroad, there is some caution that comes from the lack of control beyond Air Force installation gates. "We've paid a lot of attention to preparations in civil industry, but we must be able to continue operating, even if those folks do have problems," Ambrose said.

To ensure operations in the face of Y2K failures, Air Force installations have drawn up contingency and continuity of operations plans designed to minimize the impact such failures would have on operational readiness.

"We don't expect any catastrophic problems to occur," the general said. "We're looking for nuisance anomalies such as incorrect date stamps, but we must be ready for worse."

Because of its position on the dateline, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, will play a significant role in determining how well the Air Force has prepared.

"We'll be taking a hard look at Andersen and the rest of the government facilities on Guam to see what kind of things transpire there," Ambrose said. "If they do encounter any Y2K anomalies, we'll use that as early warning to get all the bases on the other side of the dateline spun up and, as a minimum, to be ready to execute the continuity of operations plans associated with failed systems."

http://www.af.mil/news/Nov1999/n19991110_992062.html

-- "Q" (querty@coldcountry.com), November 10, 1999

Answers

Weren't these the fellows that got caught fibbing about the remediation status of hydrogen bombs?

-- Not Whistlin' Dixie (not_whistlin_dixie@yahoo.com), November 10, 1999.