Pentagon Prepares for Y2K War...07/15/99
 By Ted Bridis The Associated Press
 
F A I R F A X,   Va.,   July 14 — The Pentagon is finishing what is believed to be the largest-ever simultaneous test of computer systems to make sure Year 2000 problems won't prevent delivery to the troops of everything from bullets to toilet
paper.

The Pentagon said Tuesday it had identified, and quickly fixed, three minor glitches in its enormously complex computerized logistics network. The weeklong test was expected to conclude today.  Technical experts built a duplicate network "what they called a "parallel processing environment"" then rolled those computer clocks forward to simulate the week following Feb. 28, 2000.

"The Ultimate in Testing"  "What we're seeing is the ultimate in testing," said John Koskinen, chairman of President Clinton's Year 2000 commission.

The Defense Department needs to watch how its systems behaved during the date rollover from 1999 to 2000, and it needs to make sure computers will recognize the next leap year.

Zach Goldstein, the department's director of logistics information systems, said the test will prevent officers on the battlefield from neglecting to request extra ammunition "because your computer systems have the wrong date."

Tests Stay Away from D.C.

The test involved 44 military computer systems and more than 1,000 people in 22 locations, including five Navy ships. None of the computers being tested this week was closer than 50 miles to Washington.   "We couldn't take our systems offline to do a Y2K test," Goldstein said. He compared the test to those being run by private corporations but added, "If we don't do our job, our customers can be killed."

John Nyere, a consultant who coordinated the test, said it found only three minor problems. In two cases, the year on some supply requests incorrectly advanced from "99" to "100" instead of to "00" and in another instance, a system failed to recognize Feb. 29, 2000.  Nyere called those problems.

Duplicate of Actual Pentagon System The computer network being tested is a duplicate of the Pentagon’s genuine supply system except for the volume of requests running across it, Goldstein said.  Software tools will simulate the enormous number of those requests — roughly 2.5 billion annually — to look for bottlenecks on the network that might have been caused inadvertently by Y2K repair efforts.

In addition to helping to identify potential problems, the test was also an important public-relations opportunity for the Defense Department, which invited reporters and TV camera crews to watch from the offices of a major defense contractor in northern Virginia.