DISA's Museum Grade Message System

The Defense Information Systems Agency last week said it plans to extend a contract with Computer Sciences Corp. for operation of a Cold War messaging system so old that pieces of it now are in the Smithsonian Institution.

The DISA contract with CSC calls for continued maintenance of the National Gateway Center Messaging System at Fort Detrick, Md., which the agency described as "highly specialized and a one-of-a kind system," formerly known as AUTODIN or the Automatic Digital Network.

AUTODIN, developed in 1958, headed to the Smithsonian attic sometime in the mid-1990s, when then-DISA director Air Force Lt. Gen. Al Edmonds donated a bunch of hardware at a ceremony I attended.

But evidently AUTODIN -- which operates at a maximum speed of 9,600 kilobytes per second in an era where DISA uses circuits that operate at gigabytes per second -- still has some use. I have asked DISA what it's used for today, and will pass the information on when I get an answer.

And how much is that sole source AUTODIN contract with CSC worth? DISA tells me that such information is source selection sensitive information, and if I file a FOIA after Mar. 31, 2011, I might get an answer.