AUGUST 23, 1999

DOD: Face Y2K on your own

BY BOB BREWIN (antenna@fcw.com)

http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1999/0823/fcw-newsdod-08-23-99.html

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

The Defense Department, expected to be the federal agency to respond to potential crises brought about by the Year 2000 problem, this month said it does not plan to react to all requests for help from state and local civilian authorities.

DOD adopted the position in an Aug. 12 message sent to all the military services by the Army's Director of Military Support (DOMS) in the Pentagon. DOMS has been charged with providing military support to civilian authorities under the DOD Year 2000 Consequence Management Plan.

The message follows guidance issued by deputy secretary of Defense John Hamre last month, which emphasized that the first priority for military units engaged in Year 2000 crises management will be their basic mission of defending the nation. "As a basic principle, commanders will not compromise military readiness in providing support to civil authorities," Hamre wrote.

The DOMS message goes even further, making it clear that even if civilian authorities ask for help, they may not receive it. "It should be anticipated and publicized that not all requests from civil authorities will be filled," according to the message.

The Pentagon, according to the message, also has tightened disclosure of its vast supply of resources, which includes food, engineering equipment, generators and water purification plants, that could help cities and counties that may be afflicted with Year 2000 snafus. "Any request for inventory levels of DOD resources from non-DOD activities will be denied," the DOMS message said.

Navy's Plans

The Navy, in its Year 2000 contingency planning and consequence management plan released this month, made it clear that it planned to centrally manage requests for help from communities outside its bases. The Federal Emergency Management Agency "will coordinate with [DOD] to prioritize such needs, and [DOMS] will task specific services to respond as required," the Navy plan said.

Local commanders can only engage in "unilateral emergency actions that involve the saving of lives, prevent great human suffering or mitigate great property damage, only when time does not permit approval by higher authorities," according to the Navy contingency plan. Pentagon officials could not be reached for comment.

Year 2000 problem researcher Jim Kerrigan, president of market research firm Colmar Corp. and a former director of information resources at the Treasury Department, said he doubted that Defense bases would ignore the Year 2000 problems of nearby communities.

"When it comes right down to it, I suspect bases will be able to help local communities," he said. "They can't do their own jobs if the local community is up in arms."

Kerrigan said the potential for municipalities to experience Year 2000 problems remains a reality, even though some portions of industry, such as the financial services sector, have done a thorough job of fixing its systems. He said local governments could face Year 2000-related problems with gas, water and electricity. "All these sorts of things are likely to happen. Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist," he said. "Obviously, I hope I'm wrong."

But he said the public in many cases has not understood the importance of finding and fixing Year 2000 bugs in unlikely places, such as in computers and computer chips that control elevators and pacemakers. "The perception that people have - I think some people still don't have a clue," he said.

Software Bugs

With DOD now heavily focused on Year 2000 consequence management, the Navy plans to pay close attention to the possibility that software programmers who have fixed date code could have introduced malicious code into DOD computer systems as a result of the Year 2000 remediation process. Fixing computers for the Year 2000 bug "provided the opportunity for many individuals to have access to DOD source computer code...[which] provided the opportunity for unscrupulous programmers to compromise system integrity and/or introduce programs into Navy computers that can degrade or interrupt Navy operations," the Navy said.

The plan added that "given the quantity of commercial off-the-shelf Y2K patches written by unknown [citizens] and possibly non-U.S. citizens, there is increased risk that malicious code could be embedded in these patches."

Lee Freeman, a Year 2000 expert at Source Recovery Co., called this a legitimate concern, considering the large number people who worked to fix and patch DOD systems. He said the chances of such code not being discovered is low.

L. Scott Tillett contributed to this article.

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999

Answers

What a hopeless mess.

Y2K CANNOT BE FIXED!

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), August 23, 1999.

Seems like only yesterday..

http://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000iVe

-- (time@flies.away), August 23, 1999.

Excellent Diane, thanks!

Is it me or does it seem as if the Navy is working with a bit of disregard to the federal position/agenda/spin?

Mike

====================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), August 23, 1999.

You MIGHT consider the fact that the "Federal Position" is a CIVILIAN position, espoused by the Tailhooker in Chief.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), August 23, 1999.

One can only "hope" Mike, that the Navy rank 'n file reluctantly supports the "spin cycle" we saw in glorious technicolor last week.

We're all in this one together... or not.

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999.

BTW, I have "questions" as to the DoD rushing in to "help" San Jose (Silicon Valley) if needed.

*Sigh*

See... San Jose's Y2K contingency planning

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 001I0J

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999.

Diane,

I do not mean to detract from the wonderful job that you do, tracking down info, for us on the board. However, I cannot imagine what the person must be thinking, who finds anything surprising or out of the ordinary, about this news.

The first and foremost job of any military, is to protect the national boundaries. Any other consideration is subordinate to that. Therefore, if any external threat were to manifest itself during a Y2K emergency, the military would have no recourse, but to deny requests for assistance with local problems.

The DOD statement was simply a reminder of that reality, to those whose responsibility it is, to maintain the safety and order of states, counties and municipalities.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja. com), August 23, 1999.

Thanks Bokonon, you said it much nicer than I would have. My main comment when reading this was, "So what?" Then I realized that non- military folks think the military does nothing all day but wait for the community to need it. Or they think in terms of movies, that is, that all military folks are power hungry demons waiting to pounce, bring out the guns and other weapons of mass destruction, ready to kill all in their path... You get the picture.

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), August 23, 1999.

The significance of this story is

NEWBIES, YOU NEED TO STORE YOUR OWN Y2K FOOD AND WATER CAUSE THE DOD AINT GONNA BE THERE FOR YOU.

Not all of the visitors to this site are Y2K gurus like Maria and Bokonnon.

-- a (a@a.a), August 23, 1999.

"The DOD statement was simply a reminder of that reality, to those whose responsibility it is, to maintain the safety and order of states, counties and municipalities."

In other words, putting the onus where it belongs...any local govt that has hesitated to spend the necessary dollars for preparation and contingency planning has been given the wake up call. But don't you have to wonder how many of them have heard the call; how many of them are infected with the govt.-will-save-us syndrome.

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), August 23, 1999.

The "City Contingency Plan" drafts that were studied may have shown FEMA that too many cities were counting on the limited resource, further analysis may have made it crystal clear that the guard and reserve resources needed to be committed to areas that allowed them to be free for going where they were needed and actually used. They will not be in a pool - waiting to be called. They will be busy, and too small in numbers to be in full force in every large city that named them in the contingency plans.

-- Living in (the@real.world), August 23, 1999.

Here's an article addressing the issues: Fema director Witt tangling with the states/congress -

Link

-- Shelia (Shelia@active-stream.com), August 23, 1999.

NEWBIES, YOU NEED TO STORE YOUR OWN Y2K FOOD AND WATER CAUSE THE DOD AINT GONNA BE THERE FOR YOU.

Not all of the visitors to this site are Y2K gurus like Maria and Bokonnon.

a, Pardon me for saying so, but that's just the sort of air-brained claptrap that passes for intelligent discourse, among the hormomaly challenged, on this board.

Maria and I just happen to agree on this one topic. On the issue of preps, we are as far apart as night and day. I have never once, not once, mind you, advocated against preparing for Y2K. My position is, was and will be, right up to and thru next year, to make as many preps as is humanly possible for you, because you can't rule out the worst.

My parting company with you, a, is that I believe the whole problem was the result of bungling and short-sightedness. Pardon me, my lack of political correctness, in not touting the party line of, it's all happening because because of some movie-style evil conspiracy.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 23, 1999.

WE send our military everywhere else to help feed the hungry,etc and we pay the bill.We should expect the same if our own people our starving,but these people and the DOD dont see it that way,you military people need to remember who is paying you..

-- G Bailey (GBa6872290@aol.com), August 23, 1999.

No, Bonkerson and Maria, what you are seeing is "pre-emptive" distancing from what is about to happen. Also known as defining one's turf.

Maria, good to see you posting again. We have missed you. With Decker pretty much leaving us, we definitely need your polly perspective more than ever!

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), August 23, 1999.

The real import of this statement made by DOD is that they are anticipating a crisis.

jeff

-- jeff (rock@island.com), August 23, 1999.

They are anticipating saving their own a**, which by the way, applies to almost any other branch of government you'd care to name. If they don't give a damn about you now, why would they in a crisis?

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), August 24, 1999.

Interesting that the Armed Forces are going to help the general population. How much can they help. Military bases can`t have enough provisions to help many for even a short lenght of time. Are there enough GIs in the Service to keep the rule of law? Does the Commander- in-ORAL think the Nationl Guard will report when called? How many will be torn between families and service? Manpower will be a problem. Miguel

-- Miguel Mueller (Miguelmuel@aol.com), August 24, 1999.

In SV, CERT teams are told to utilize open space as EOCs in case of emergencies.

We were told (as of Jan, at least) that EOCs were to be located in open spaces, for at least two reasons:

* open spaces don't have anything that can fall on top of people in cases of earthquakes or storms; and

* open spaces permit airlifting of emergency supplies and key personnel and emergency evacuation of victims by helicopter.

The problems (as I see them) are:

* we were told at the same time that the number of serviceable helicopters available to CERT in the area (from the National Guard and Coast Guard) were down to something like 2 from a significantly larger number sometime in the mid to late 1980s; and

* I have seen plans to link CERT to Y2K preparedness on a local basis in November [note: I don't know where, exactly, but I think I took a clue from one of the postings of the last few days and dug a bit on the net].

CERT is already linked to FEMA on an apparently irregular basis, and this linkage can no doubt be totally formalized with all the Clinton EOs flying around on national emergency confiscations and so on.

I would not be surprised if Clinton gave an order to Defense to submit a portion of its resources to FEMA command under a Y2k "national emergency" (Posse Comitatus Act be d*mned). There seems to be so much confusion as to the role of the military and the inherent lack of organization integrity at the national level (ie "anything goes"), that I could easily imagine no one (in the media or other branches of fed govt, that is) giving the order a second thought. The problem is, whether the military is still capable of mounting any significant effort of the order required at all. I share Diane's skepticism concerning the military role. In particular, I am concerned that the military be used en masse as an extension of the National Guard to impose curfew, quell domestic urban disturbances, perform road checks, enforce detentions, and so on. (None of which is permitted by that pesky Posse Comitatus Act, but then certain laws seem to be regarded as a fine distinction, at least to the current administration...) If one wants to contemplate a true worst case scenario, one might imagine widespread riots followed by deployment and incompetent execution by the military of civilian riot control, road checks, and so on. That would be an E ticket ride, indeed, and probably neither a short nor pleasant one...

-- Ann Y Body (annybody@nowhere.dis.org), August 24, 1999.

FWIW&FYI, check out the DOD directives 3025.1&3025.15 if you care to.

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), August 24, 1999.