IP: Canadian Military Ready for Y2K Meltdown

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

From: believer@telepath.com
Subject: IP: Canadian Military Ready for Y2K Meltdown
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 10:18:46 -0500
To: believer@telepath.com

Source:  NOW On Communications
http://www.now.com/issues/current/News/tech.html

Militia readies for millennium meltdown 
2000 cyberglitch the major concern for Canadian forces 

By PATRICK CAIN 

Preparing for a civil emergency resulting from mass computer collapse on
January 1, 2000, has become the first priority of the Canadian military, a
general told a group of Toronto-area reservists in Meaford Sunday. 

That means the military is taking the millennium bug so seriously that its
worst-case plan, Operation Abacus, is a higher priority than Canada's part
in the NATO force in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where 1,319 Canadian soldiers (at
the moment, most from Ontario) are helping enforce the Dayton Accord. 

"Some people argue that it is the first priority amongst many priorities,"
brigadier general Walt Holmes, who commands ground forces in Ontario, tells
NOW Monday.  

"Our operational commitments in Bosnia will carry on, and so our soldiers
who are either deployed to or preparing for those operations will be given
the same support. 

"One can never anticipate what else may happen in the world to cause us to
have to deploy soldiers, so the bottom line is, if nothing else from a
contingency-planning point of view (emerges) it's the top priority with the
Canadian Forces." 

The problem, often referred to as Y2K, stems from the way computers express
the year portion of a numerical date, like 12/31/99. 

When the code that forms the foundation of modern computer software was
being written in the 50s and 60s, programmers decided not to use
then-precious computer space for the first two digits of the year. 

Because computers working on these assumptions aren't aware of centuries or
millennia, they will decide that January 1, 2000, is actually January 1,
1900. Because this disrupts the computer's sense of chronological sequence,
it can cause chaos and system breakdown.  

Since computer systems with six-digit dates control everything from
electricity systems to emergency dispatch systems to air traffic control,
companies, utilities and governments are pouring money and time into
finding and
fixing the bug. 

Too vast 

But because this involves scanning miles upon miles of computer code, some
argue that the task is simply too vast and intricate to be accomplished. 

Rotting food, cranky nuclear reactors, banking systems run amok -- a few
hours in the world of Y2K prophecy is enough to make you think a bunker in
Algoma full of canned beans might be the best idea after all. 

Most things we depend on depend on a computer chip somewhere, and that
includes deep freezes, nuclear reactors, food distribution systems, banking
systems, phone switching systems, wage and pension cheques, taxes, and
building management systems without which high-rise office buildings -- and
therefore Bay Street -- can't function.  

"I can't make you feel 100 per cent confident that everything is going to
function on January 1 of the year 2000," Ted Clark, the vice-president of
Ontario Hydro's Y2K project, told an alarmed parliamentary committee in April.
Hydro says it has 600 people working on the problem. 

But we don't need to wait for the end of the millennium to watch the
problem unfold -- Y2K glitches are already happening. Earlier this year,
the New York State liquor licence system crashed spectacularly when
officials tried to enter a licence that would expire in 2000. More
recently, the systems of several hospitals in Pennsylvania crashed when
staff tried to enter a medical appointment in 2000.  

At a conference in Ottawa last week, Toronto-based senior army officers
argued for a mobilization plan to deal with military involvement in a
possible crisis. 

Mobilization plan 

"The recommendation from us is that we would like to see some form of
commitment to ensuring that the reserves are able to respond," Holmes
observes.  

"We just said some sort of mobilization plan, to allow us to determine what
reserves we may get. (That would correspond to) Level Two mobilization." 

(In Canadian military doctrine, four stages of mobilization exist -- Stage
1 is the existence of the armed forces, Stage 2 is deployment of the armed
forces in its existing organization, Stage 3 is military expansion in an
emergency, and Stage 4 is national mobilization in war.)  

Among the options the military is considering is the stockpiling of food
and generators in armouries against a serious emergency.  

"As to where they're going to go, and what the end result will be, we don't
know yet," Holmes says. "It  depends on the perceived threat, as we get
closer to the date."  

Persistent rumours that Christmas leave in 1999 will be cancelled for
regular soldiers are premature, Holmes says. ("They'll probably wait until
everybody's made plans, and do it then," quips military critic Scott Taylor.) 

One important issue is what legal category military involvement in a crisis
would fall into. The armed forces recognize two types of domestic
operations -- unarmed assistance to civil authorities, which mostly
involves coping with natural disasters like the February ice storm or the
Manitoba flood, and "aid to the civil power," which
implies the potential use of force. Oka and the imposition of the War
Measures Act in 1970 would fall into this latter category. 

 Humanitarian  relief 

"The emphasis would be on domestic operations and humanitarian relief, if
required," Holmes says. "We are the force of last resort, and if something
happens, we are there to be called upon, but the focus is clearly on
domestic (humanitarian) operations." 

Toronto-area army reservists in Meaford last weekend were told that
riot-control training, which the militia in Toronto last underwent on a
large scale in the late 80s and early 90s in the aftermath of the Oka
crisis, is not on the agenda for now. 

 NOW OCTOBER 8-14, 1998 

 � 1998 NOW Communications Inc.
 NOW and NOW Magazine and the
 NOW design are protected through
trademark registration. 
-----------------------
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distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only. For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
-----------------------




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