DOD's key command system clears Y2K hurdle

The Defense Department's Global Command and Control System (GCCS) as wellas its worldwide voice, video and data networks successfully transitionedto the millennium at midnight Greenwich Mean Time and Eastern Standard Timewith no Year 2000 outages reported.

GCCS, which top DOD commanders worldwide use to control and mange forces aswell as obtain near real-time graphical snapshots of the disposition offriendly and potentially enemy forces, crossed into the New Year in bothZulu and East Coast time zones without any Year 2000 outages. GCCS alsoprovides applications such a mapping programs and intelligence databases.

A spokeswoman for the Defense Information Systems Agency, headquarteredabout a mile from the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., said routers and switchessupporting DOD's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet) and theNon-classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) completed theGreenwich, or Zulu, and EST rollovers free from Y2K glitches.

These systems also made the Year 2000 transition without experiencingintense cyber-attacks widely anticipated by DOD officials last month. APentagon spokesman said that while DOD computer security officialscontinued to report cyber incidents throughout the last day of 1999, "noneof them were extraordinary and nothing was very successful."