But will guardsmen be Y2K-ready?

July 6, 1999

While the National Guard prepares for possible Y2K related civil disturbances and terrorist threats, its own computers are falling far behind in becoming Y2K compliant, according to a National Guard computer systems specialist.

“Our operating systems for both the Logistics and Business mainframes are still not Y2K compliant,” the source told WorldNetDaily. He is a civilian employee working on the very computers involved and expressed concern that the systems will not be ready to function on New Year’s Eve because of the Y2K bug.

The problem includes every mainframe computer in all 50 states and four territories of the National Guard. Those computers were supposed to be repaired and ready earlier this year but failed the tests miserably, according to the source who would not permit his name to be published because of the nature of the information he has provided in the past and hopes to continue to provide. His position and information have been independently verified.

Computer systems operators working for National Guard units in many states recently attended training on the Personnel Retirement Accounting System, one of many systems that had supposedly been upgraded with Y2K compliant software.

“The trip turned out to be a farce,” one of the computer operators told WorldNetDaily. “The present system is on a Santa Cruz Operations UNIX box. SCO does not support its UNIX package anymore, and it is definitely not a Y2K compatible operating system,” he said in frustration.

“The system is far from ready,” another attendee said in a separate interview. “They expect it to be ready by September 1st, with a big maybe attached to that! So we basically were there to contribute our input on how the system should run on a user and systems support level. The trip was a waste of time for the government, but I feel that we had some of the brightest people from around the country, and we pointed the Pentagon’s systems analyst in the right direction,” he said.

The National Guard can continue to function without the Personnel Retirement Accounting System, but not without the Logistics and Supply System computers. A similar training program on the Y2K upgraded computers for Logistics and Supply has been canceled at the last minute.

“They just now figured out that our current hardware configuration couldn’t support the Y2K operating system upgrade and the logistics applications upgrade. You would think that they would have noticed this a long time ago, not now, at the last minute,” the computer specialist exclaimed.

The problem with the computers is significant. According to an internal e-mail memo, the “Prepare for War” portion of the Logistics System was destroyed or removed by the Y2K upgrade to the system. Not only are the computers not capable of functioning at the start of the new year, they are currently unable to function properly because of the error.

Will repairs be made in time? Can the system be made ready and functional by the first of the year? Are there similar problems in other military operations? Will the military be caught unable to respond to threats at the start of the new year, or sooner?

“Those are all good questions, and I wish I knew the answers,” a top officer in the National Guard Bureau responded. He participates in almost daily meetings dealing with Y2K consequence planning. “We have a saying, ‘There’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.’ If you apply that here you realize that we’re in trouble.

“I know what the public affairs people will tell you. ‘All is well. We’re just being prudent. We’re being good Boy Scouts and being prepared for anything, even though we don’t think anything will actually happen.’ They’ll even tell you, ‘It’s a good exercise for us. We’re learning a lot from all this.’ Yeah, we’re learning how bad off we are,” he remarked.

Part of the problem of getting ready for Y2K may be simple incompetence and bureaucratic ineptness. One of the computer systems specialists said the National Guard knowingly just installed computer software even though it is not Y2K compliant.

“The Logistics Supply System local area network interacts with the mainframe. They installed the old Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on the workstations. How Y2K compatible is that? Answer — not very,” stated the computer information systems operators.

When he asked superiors why the inferior software was being installed, he was told that the National Guard received it for free and wanted to save some money. No one seemed to care about the fact that the operating system will not work in less than six months.

When the National Guard Bureau officer was told about the free software problem, he said, “That’s just one example. That sort of thing goes on throughout the guard. Now do you see why I’m concerned?”

There was no response from National Guard public affairs.

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