The Sydney Morning Herald Breaking News http://www.smh.com.au/news/current/breaking2/index.html Friday, January 15, 1999 Russian and US officials says nukes should be Y2K safe Washington, Thursday: US and Russian officials today issued assurances that their offensive and defensive weapons systems would not be affected by the Year 2000 computer bug (Y2K). "We will be 100 per cent ready by the end of the year," Deputy Defence Secretary John Hamre said in announcing that as of December 31, 1998 the Pentagon had certified that 81 per cent of "mission critical" computer systems were ready for the arrival of 2000. The Y2K problem begins when computers try to add or subtract dates using only the last two digits of the year - 00 in the case of 2000 - which may confuse computers into reading the date as 1900. Larger, older mainframe computers used by government and big corporations for many vital functions are particularly vulnerable. President Clinton had asked all government agencies to reach the 100 per cent ready mark by March 1999. The Defence Department will be at the 93 per cent mark by then, Hamre said. The Defence Department "went into hyperdrive" with its Y2K work after realising last August that it was moving too slowly in preparing the approximately 2,300 crucial computer systems, Hamre said. In all, the Pentagon has about 10,000 computer systems. Hamre said minor glitches are likely to crop up on January 1, 2000. "I think it's going to clearly be in a category of nuisance," he said. "I'm very confident we won't have major problems." The bill for fixing the Pentagon's computers and testing them will reach $US2.5 billion, ($3.98 billion) Hamre said. Meanwhile, a expert said today that while Russia was behind many Western nations in confronting the Y2K problem, Soviet-era computers that control nuclear weapons and reactors were unlikely to cause any accidents. Andrei Terekov, a St Petersburg University mathematics professor and director of Lanit Holding, a firm helping Russian companies with the transition, said the cash-strapped government still had much to do before it was ready for the changeover at the end of the year. He estimated it would cost $US500 million ($796 million) to fix critical systems. But Terekov said there was growing awareness in Russia of potential failures in computers in less than 350 days. "My understanding is that the problem with strategic weapons has been solved," Terekov said, meaning it was unlikely the Y2K problem would cause warheads to detonate or missiles to be fired by mistake. But he said "there still were problems with infrastructure", referring to air defence and early warning systems. Russia has agreed to allow NATO experts to investigate how the year 2000 computer problem could affect these systems. - The Associated Press This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html The Year 2000 Bug - An Urgent Sustainability Issue http://www.peg.apc.org/~psutton/grin-y2k.htm
